At least four leading Danish, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Singaporean, and US-based offshore contractors or consortia are said to be chasing a prized engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract tied to the Hai Long offshore wind project in Taiwan, project watchers told Upstream.

The traditional oil and gas EPC players are drawing on synergies from their existing work profile as they expand into the potentially lucrative offshore wind market.

Hai Long is part of a large global buildout of sea-based wind capacity that will reduce reliance on fossil fuels in key energy-consuming regions such as Asia. With the building of Hai Long, the project owners aim to install 1.044gigawatts of installed offshore wind capacity in the Taiwan Strait which currently only has 35GW installed. The Hai Long project owners include independent power producer Northland Power with a 60% stake, with Asian-based Yushan Energy and Mitsui, each on 20%.

Project watchers reported that the EPC contract for the Hai Long project is for two offshore wind substations and those believed to have submitted a second round of bids last month to the operator for the coveted EPC job included a grouping of Denmark-headquartered Semco Maritime with Vietnam’s Petrovietnam Technical Services Corporation, another consortium of Danish player Ramboll and Malaysia’s Sapura Energy, Singapore’s Keppel Offshore & Marine, and US-based McDermott International.

In an email response to Upstream queries, a Northland Power spokesperson said that the development of Hai Long 2 & 3 is progressing well and that project commissioning is expected by the end of 2025 and 2026 with (final investment decision) in 2022.