DRILLING & EXPLORATION Why You Shouldn’t Let Geological
Constraints Derail Your Offshore Projects Fiona O’Connell, Managing Director and founder of leading UK trenchless drilling, civil engineering and pipelines specialist, Stockton Group, talks about overcoming the challenges of difficult ground conditions and environmental considerations to keep offshore energy projects moving.
When you start any new offshore project, it’s no surprise to face unexpected obstacles that challenge your best-laid plans.
It’s something we experienced at Stockton Group just a few years ago, when we were working on the Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Ltd (BOWL) project in Scotland, one of the largest investments ever made into Scottish energy infrastructure.
Our team was brought in to deliver two pipeline installations for high velocity cables in relation to the windfarm, with a trenchless drilling technique needed to safely connect to the shore, whilst protecting sensitive coastal environments.
We quickly learned that the area had challenging ground conditions, with loose sediment comprising pebbles and cobbles, overlaying a bedrock of weathered sandstone. This prevented traditional Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) from being used, due to the likelihood of unstable boreholes, fluid loss, and likely difficulty of steering.
Instead, we opted for Direct Pipe®. Like HDD, it’s a trenchless drilling method, but with the advantage of a single pass installation, where the borehole is excavated and the welded pipe string lines the hole as it goes.
The whole operation was carried out from land, and the team developed several innovative solutions to work through the technical constraints we met, most notably achieving the world’s first offshore disconnection of a Direct Pipe® system. Here, the tunnelling equipment was separated from the pipeline on the seabed, and recovered using a remote disconnect module, meaning it remained operational for future use.
Now complete, the Beatrice Offshore Windfarm has 84 turbines with a capacity of 588 megawatts, powering 450,000 homes each year.
For us, this experience reinforced the value of understanding site conditions as early as possible in a project, so you can plan drilling and installation strategies around the realities that you’re working with.
By working collaboratively with specialist engineering partners, ground investigators, and environmental regulators at an early stage, well before work begins, you can build alternative solutions into your project planning to avoid costly delays down the line.
Every site presents its own challenges, but those challenges oſten create opportunities to rethink conventional approaches and deliver better outcomes for clients and end-customers.
Geological constraints shouldn’t be seen as a project-ending problem. With proper planning, and a willingness from teams and developers to adapt and adopt innovative installation methods when needed, offshore projects can continue to move forward while meeting both environmental and operational objectives.
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www.sosmagazine.biz July Issue 2026
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