Abstract
Statoil ASA received a Marine Licence on the 30th October 2015 to develop the Hywind Scotland
Pilot Park Project (“Hywind Scotland”). Five floating wind turbines (FWTs) will be installed, each with
a generating capacity of 6 MW giving a total generating capacity of 30 MW, approximately 25 km off
the coast of Peterhead. Each turbine will be anchored by a three-point mooring spread, and they will
be connected by inter-array cables (figure 1.1). An export cable will transport the generated electricity
to the shore. The application, Marine Licence decision documents and other documentation are
placed on Marine Scotland’s web page1
.
An horizontal directional drilling (HDD) solution was selected for the cable landfall. The HDD
activities, including the installation of a duct in the borehole for later pull in of the export cable, was
completed in September 2016, whereas the rest of the offshore installation works will be carried out
in 2017.
A separate HDD plan, covering the marine activities in 2016, was developed by Statoil, and Marine
Scotland approved this as sufficient for partly discharging the Licence conditions for these activities.
For the remaining offshore construction activities to be performed in 2017, Statoil has agreed with
Marine Scotland to develop a construction plan, covering the relevant licence conditions in one
document, rather than preparing separate documents or plans for each condition. The issues
covered are listed below, where appropriate with reference to the relevant conditions to be
discharged:
- Development Specification and Layout Plan - DSLP (Technical description), ref. condition 3.2.2.6;
- Lighting and Marking Plan – LMP, ref. condition 3.2.2.11;
- Construction Method Statement – CMS, ref. condition 3.2.2.5;
- Cable Plan – CaP, ref. condition 3.2.2.10 a, b, d, e and h;
- Vessel Management Plan – VMP, ref. condition 3.2.2.7;
- Construction Programme - CoP (Schedule), ref. condition 3.2.2.4;
- Baseline description, ref. condition 3.2.2.10 b and c;
- Environmental Management Plan – EMP, ref. condition 3.2.1.2, including chemical usage (ref. condition 3.1.7) and environmental protection (condition 3.1.8);
- Fisheries Management and Mitigation Strategy – FMMS, ref. condition 3.2.1.3;
- Emergency Response Co-operation Plans – ERCoP (including emergency response and HSE
- incidents reporting (brief description, conditions 3.2.1.7 and 3.2.1.10 to be discharged through
- separate documents);
- Navigational Safety Plan – NSP, ref. condition 3.2.2.8;
- Marine Archaeology Reporting Protocol – MARP, ref. condition 3.2.2.19;
Five additional plans will be prepared to discharge the remaining license conditions. Statoil has
agreed with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA to prepare two Emergency Response and
Co-operation Plans (ERCoPs) following a standard template; one for the construction phase and one
for the operational phase. Emergency response and reporting of health and safety incidents (ref
conditions 3.2.1.7 and 3.2.1.10) is therefore only briefly covered in this construction plan.
Furthermore, separate plans will be developed for environmental monitoring (ref. condition 3.2.1.1,
3.2.1.4, 3.2.1.5 and 3.2.1.6) and for operation and maintenance (ref. condition 3.2.2.9), as these
covers activities beyond the construction phase. A Decommissioning Programme (ref. condition
3.2.2.3) has already been issued for consultation, and will be updated as necessary.