NOR is happy to announce that Tore Gautesen, current Port Director at Karmsund Havn, is hired as the new Managing Director for Norwegian Offshore Rental (NOR). Gautesen brings with him solid business experience and the ability to further develop the company.

Norwegian Offshore Rental (NOR) is happy to announce that they have acquired Innova Rental AS. NOR is headquartered in Aksdal Næringspark (in Norway), and is a significant global provider of rental equipment to the offshore, subsea, and renewable energy industries.

RWE has appointed Fugro to complete a geophysical survey off the Danish west coast. Up to three survey vessels will be deployed to carry out a detailed pre-construction survey including a search for unexploded ordnance (UXO) up to approximately 34 kilometres off the coast of Thorsminde. The data acquired is important and will define the cable routes and exact turbine locations for RWE’s Thor offshore wind farm.

In a remarkable exploration beneath the surface, the Royal Norwegian Navy's HUGIN Team 1 discovered two new aircraft wrecks in Trondheimsfjorden. The well-preserved World War II wrecks were quickly identified as the legendary Blohm & Voss BV-222 Wiking V2 and the Heinkel HE-115 S4+DH. The wrecks lie at an impressive depth of 318 and 253 meters, respectively, and have never been visited by divers or submersibles before. The last few weeks a team at Blueye Robotics have conducted several dives with underwater drones in the fjord to capture the first close-up images of the seaplanes in around 80 years.

The Norwegian Hydrographic Service (NHS) has awarded Fugro a new hydrographic survey contract for the 2023 MAREANO seabed mapping programme. This is the latest in a series of contracts that Fugro has won for the MAREANO programme, and it demonstrates the company's long-standing commitment to champion sustainable development in the marine environment.

Blueye Robotics has been awarded the contract to supply the Norwegian Coast Guard with underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV)systems. Blueye Robotics has equipped the entire fleet of Coast Guard vessels operated by the Norwegian Coast Guard with their Blueye X3 model, which was launched in 2021.

Norwegian Offshore Rental has added a Webtool portable emergency cutter to its range of rental equipment. Easily deployed on deck, and operated remotely, the cutter will provide an instant cut of softlines used for towing or umbilicals used in chemical injection systems in the event the vessel gets into difficulties.

Fugro has successfully completed fieldwork on a geophysical, geotechnical and environmental site investigation contract for RWE Renewables’ Dogger Bank South (DBS) offshore wind farm and export cable routes.

RWE Renewables is currently developing the 1600MW Offshore Wind Farm (OWF) Södra Midsjöbanken located in the southern Baltic Sea. N-Sea, along with their partner Ocean Ecology, were contracted for late season provision of vessel, equipment, and personnel to perform a geophysical site survey and environmental baseline survey, as well as full data processing, sample analysis, interpretation, and reporting.

Neptune Energy and RWE today announced the signing of a Joint Development Agreement to develop the offshore green hydrogen project "H2opZee" ahead of 2030. H2opZee is a demonstration project which aims to build 300-500 megawatts (MW) electrolyser capacity in the North Sea to produce green hydrogen using offshore wind. The hydrogen will then be transported to land through an existing pipeline.

Impact Subsea is delighted to announce the appointment of two new companies as distributors of Impact Subsea sensor solutions. Norwegian Offshore Rental has been appointed as a distributor within Norway and Seismic Asia Pacific within Australia.

Project partners RWE, Shell, Gasunie and Equinor signed a declaration of intent to further intensify their collaboration on the AquaSector project - the vision of the first large-scale German offshore hydrogen park. The project aims to demonstrate that in Germany offshore based hydrogen production enables an efficient, cost-effective and sustainable way to produce green hydrogen.

Equinor, RWE Renewables and Hydro REIN have signed a collaboration agreement for offshore wind in Norway. The partners will jointly prepare and submit an application to the Norwegian authorities to develop a large-scale bottom-fixed offshore wind farm in the Sørlige Nordsjø II area in the Norwegian North Sea.

Kongsberg technology is set to play a pivotal role in the working life of a recently-activated microsatellite. The Norwegian Space Agency’s new NorSat-3, launched on April 29th, 2021 from Vega Flight VV 18 which took off from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guyana, will be used by the Norwegian Coastal Administration for monitoring maritime traffic in Norway’s busy seaways. Its AIS and NRD (navigation radar detector) payload draws upon Kongsberg’s most advanced, future-proof developments in space-based vessel detection.

Equinor is already an offshore wind major. Now the company will explore the opportunities within offshore solar power. Together with Moss Maritime the company wants to start testing off the island of Frøya.

The Norwegian Hydrographic Service has awarded Fugro another hydrographic survey contract as part of the MAREANO seabed mapping programme, financed by Norway’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, and the Ministry of Environment. Fugro has already completed 10 surveys for the programme since 2006 and acquired over 140 000 km2 of data. This latest survey will collect high-resolution, high-density multibeam echosounder and sub-bottom data to produce seamless datasets for the Norwegian mapping programme. The fieldwork will run from June to late October this year.

A new compensation format will help improve efficiency as Equinor awards new framework agreements for safety and automation systems with five suppliers.

IKM Subsea welcomed Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy Kjell-Børge Freiberg to their Bryne Headquarters last week. Freiberg had invited himself together with representatives from his Government department to view the ROV Onshore Control Center. Several members of the press also attended and the minister was impressed stating: “This is like science fiction”. Freiberg added that there is high demand for modern Norwegian technology such as this both in the oil and gas sector and renewables market. He said furthermore that the Norwegian Government now has opened further two blocks for offshore Wind parks in Norwegian waters, and that he sees IKM Subsea’s Remote and Resident ROV solutions to be highly attractive for such areas.