Uncertainty but oil & gas will not disappear At MARIN, the order intake almost came to a standstill, he says. “And even more serious, the travel restrictions made the onboard measurements on ships and floating assets de facto impossible. Now, in the second quarter of 2021, the oil price has comfortably risen to the $75 level and the world again realises how much it still relies on oil & gas. However, the future of the deep water industry remains uncertain, noting that the coronavirus has not been beaten yet and that the successful years of 2011-2015 may never return,” Jaap points out.


Addressing the challenges the industry faces, Jaap says that without doubt, the offshore energy sector is going to change dramatically in the coming decade. The focus will be shifting towards the reduction of emissions and a greater role for renewable energy in the energy mix. “However, the energy transition does not mean that we will move entirely away from fossil fuels in this period. Demographic predictions are clear about the growing world population, in combination with a rapid increase of the wealthier middle class. Energy use will therefore continue to grow dramatically over the next 30 years. For deep water oil & gas the future is not certain. But it will not disappear overnight and new discoveries are still announced in different parts of the world.” Even though the cost of deep water oil & gas has significantly come down in the last decade, the huge outlay of capital may be difficult to justify with today’s uncertain price scenarios and the general perception that we should bring the large investments in the fossil sector down to meet the climate targets, he says.


“ It's extremely difficult to judge if risks are at an acceptably low level. The highest wave is not always associated with the largest impact load.”


Collaboration is crucial In Jaap’s opinion it is all too obvious that collaboration is the way to go. Firstly, it should be noted that the field of marine hydrodynamics is not the place where the industry needs to compete, emphasises Jaap. “There are certainly some specific proprietary aspects involved and nobody will naively share data without something in return, but the common goal for everybody is to design safe and robust platforms in a cost-effective way. MARIN has always been active in the initiation of new Joint Industry Projects with the simple logic that it brings more research for the money to the participants.”


He gives an example of one of these successful collaborative projects regarding the so-called ‘wave-in-deck’ problem, which is a particularly interesting subject for a research institute in the maritime industry. “It perfectly reflects what marine hydrodynamics is all about. The ‘wave-in- deck’ problem concerns the safety of people on board. The largely unresolved problem brings together a wide variety of disciplines, such as ocean weather, extreme wave predictions, wave kinematics, platform design, operational aspects, regulation and even hard-core statistics.”


Risk assessment for wave impact Model tests for the wave-in-deck problem are still a crucial part for every new design. The changing climate adds to the complexity of the puzzle, Jaap adds, since it is even more difficult to understand what a 100-year or a 1,000-year extreme condition means. “When a sailing ship or a permanently moored platform is hit by a rogue wave, local damage may occur, personnel may be endangered or even the total integrity may be at risk. It is extremely difficult to judge if the risk is at an acceptably low level. It is also interesting to note that the highest wave is not always associated with the largest impact load.”


A risk assessment for the wave impact problem requires a selection of dangerous sea states and load levels (such as slamming pressures or forces on deck structures) in random realisations of these sea states. This is a stochastic process, which means that a large number of wave sequences have to be analysed to derive converged statistical values of the maximum load to occur in a three-hour sea state. The design methodology involves many model tests or complex (CFD) simulations. Please refer to the BreaKin projects highlighted below for more details.


10 report


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36