Act on Certainty.
Make every piece fit.
Integrated engineering, equipment and procedures lock together to remove gaps, simplify interfaces and strengthen long-term mooring performance.
A perfect storm of costs and risks
Every mooring decision is a block.
And one misplacement can change the entire outcome.
Floating energy projects are facing a perfect storm of rising costs and operational risk. Expansion into deeper and more remote waters, increasingly harsh metocean conditions, ageing floating infrastructure and mounting supply‑chain pressures are placing unprecedented strain on permanent mooring systems.
Siloed development encourages a reactive mindset which is becoming unsustainable as mooring systems move into longer production lives and more challenging conditions.
An integrated approach creates moorings that are resilient by design, grounded in rich understanding of the seabed, platform behaviour and future performance.
Our new report Anchored in certainty: Securing floating energy infrastructure in challenging conditions explores the critical considerations for permanent moorings.
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The challenges for permanent moorings in deepwater environments
In today’s offshore environment, building resilient mooring systems is like playing that classic tile-matching game at full speed:
Complexity is rising, and the margin for error is shrinking.
The push into deeper waters presents major challenges for permanent moorings, further compounding costs, delays and uncertainties.
Soft soils
The intense currents and soft soils characteristic of deepwater sites can lead to soil erosion surrounding anchors, weakening their holding capacity. This poses a risk of anchors moving or coming loose in storms, placing a heavier strain on other anchors and potentially even destabilising platforms.
Strong currents, wind and waves
Deepwater oil and gas sites feature harsh metocean conditions which can permanently stretch polyester mooring lines and cause growing wear, abrasion and fatigue damage to mooring chains and riser systems.
Ageing floating energy infrastructure and increasing maintenance costs
Rising supply chain costs and fluctuating oil and gas prices are also seeing existing platforms kept in service beyond their design lives with half of FPSOs exceeding thirty years old and a quarter over forty years old. While the industry has collectively transformed its life extension capabilities, longer asset lifecycles can add additional operational costs and complexities.
Meanwhile, a shortage of large maintenance and construction vessels could lead to even higher logistical costs and delays across both greenfield and brownfield sites.
Discover strategies to extend the life of permanent mooring systems in our report, Anchored in certainty: Securing floating energy infrastructure in challenging conditions.
Engineering for the future
No reset button. Every block counts.
Moorings need to be designed not only for the robustness of individual parts but for the resilience of the system as a whole. This means avoiding siloed approaches where moorings are designed in isolation for specific scenarios towards holistic designs where entire mooring systems are cohesively designed for collective damaged condition operability.
Furthermore, the cumulative effect of increased corrosion, wear and fatigue combined with increasingly ageing infrastructure and supply chain pressures, means that mooring systems can no longer be run to failure. There is a clear need for smart lifecycle integrity management from emergency response plans to proactive care.
Permanent mooring systems now require:
- holistic design accounting for real-world installation and long‑term conditions,
- tailored regional solutions,
- advanced modelling,
- predictive maintenance and digital integrity management,
- emergency response planning,
- end‑to‑end lifecycle integration.
In moorings, certainty is everything.
Intermoor. Act on certainty.
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Offshore energy is moving into deeper waters, harsher environments and longer design lives than ever before.
Our new report, Anchored in certainty, explores the emerging risks facing offshore moorings, from soft deepwater soils and warm-water corrosion to hard-rock floating wind sites and increasing storm frequency. More importantly, it outlines how integrated engineering, geotechnical insight and lifecycle integrity management can reduce cost, downtime and risk.
Inside, we cover:
- The rising cost pressures and logistics challenges shaping FPSO and floating wind moorings
- How extreme weather events are becoming more regular occurrences
- Why fragmented supply chains are now one of the biggest hidden risks
- The anchor and mooring technologies built for evolving seabed and weather conditions
- How integrated, end‑to‑end lifecycle approaches reduce failure risks and total cost of ownership
If you’re planning a new development, managing ageing assets or preparing for future metocean conditions, this report offers practical insights to help you stay ahead of the risk curve.
FAQs
Explore our FAQ section to understand some of the issues facing permanent moorings today.
Suction-Embedded Plate Anchors (SEPLA) combine the precision of suction anchors with the strength of plate anchors. Plate anchors can be driven deep into the seabed without hammers, minimising disturbance to soft soils while allowing them to be embedded in deeper, stronger sediments with greater holding capacity. A SEPLA is also four times lighter and uses 30% less steel than conventional suction anchors, significantly reducing supply chain costs and emissions and enabling transportation and installation with smaller vessels. The anchoring system can reduce overall costs by up to 50% and reduce carbon emissions by 60%. Early engineering should help identify valuable cost reductions and include them in the anchor selection process.
Seabed trenching happens where constant mooring line movements across the seabed erode the soil surrounding anchors, weakening their holding capacity. Intense currents and soft soils characteristic of deepwater sites create the best environment for this. This poses a risk of anchors moving or coming loose in storms, placing a heavier strain on other anchors and potentially even destabilising platforms. Susceptibility of soft soils to seabed trenching should be considered at planning stage, driving smarter mooring configurations and anchor selection.
A time-domain analysis examines the performance of mooring systems over time across a wider range of conditions (wind, wave, current). It calculates the forces and motions the floating asset is submitted to, over a period of time. This includes assessing how mooring line tensions will change under moderate everyday currents as well as extremely strong currents. Dynamic analysis assessing the resilience of mooring systems against a broad range of current conditions should be coupled with fatigue assessments and operational envelope definitions predicting the upper limits within which moorings can safely operate.
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