AUTHOR=Griffiths Terry , Draper Scott , Cheng Liang , An Hongwei , Schläppy Marie-Lise , Fogliani Antonino , White David , Noble Stuart , Coles Daniel , Johnson Fraser , Thurstan Bryan , Teng Yunfei 

TITLE=The offshore renewables industry may be better served by new bespoke design guidelines than by automatic adoption of recommended practices developed for oil and gas infrastructure: A recommendation illustrated by subsea cable design

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1030665

DOI=10.3389/fmars.2023.1030665

ISSN=2296-7745

ABSTRACT=There is an emerging need for the offshore renewable industry to have their own bespoke design guidelines because the associated projects and offshore facilities differ in fundamental ways to oil&gas facilities. Offshore renewable energy (ORE) facilities have already surpassed the numbers of installed facilities in the oil and gas industry by an order of magnitude and demand is forecast to continue growing exponentially. ORE facilities often have different response characteristics and failure modes as well as profoundly different risks given they are uncrewed and do not contain explosive hydrocarbons. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for licensing bodies and regulators to challenge the process of automatic adoption of oil and gas design processes, while pushing for offshore renewables to be treated differently, when appropriate, with more relevant and applicable guidance. 
To support this argument we present new bespoke design guidance developed for subsea cables based on specific modes of cable behaviour, which often differ from pipelines. We also show worked examples from recent project experience. The results from on-bottom stability analyses of a set of cables are compared between conventional oil and gas guidance following DNV-RP-F109 versus the stability using cable-optimised approaches. The outcomes from the ‘conventional’ oil and gas results are not simply biased compared to cable-optimised design methods, with a trend of being either conservative or unconservative. Instead, the results of the two methods are very poorly correlated. This shows that the oil and gas approach isn't simply biased when applied to cables, but is instead unreliable because it doesn't capture the underlying failure conditions. These analytical comparisons are supported by field observation - the ocean doesn't lie, and makes short work of any anthropogenic structures which are designed with inadequate appreciation of the real world conditions.
To support the rapid growth of ORE, we should pursue opportunities to rewrite the design rules and standards, so that they better support the specific requirements of ORE infrastructure, rather than legacy oil and gas structures. With more appropriate design practices, we can accelerate the rollout of ORE to meet net zero, and mitigate the climate crisis.