The Offshore Energy Quiz Show

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In this episode, our hosts Jim Bennett and Ian Voparil try their luck in a quiz show format - testing each others' knowledge of offshore energy jargon and trivia.  Along the way, we highlight misconceptions, delve into technical jargon, and talk about critical regulatory frameworks.  We also get a couple of the questions wrong, so tell us where we've made a mistake and see if you'd do better!  We are always learning. 

• Explanation of BSEE vs. BOEM and their roles 
• Breakdown of lease sale auctions and bidding processes 
• Insight into wind farms and construction methods 
• Financial concepts like break-even points discussed 
• Overview of environmental regulations like IHAs 
• Introduction and impact of technologies such as LIDAR 
• Encouragement for ongoing discussion and learning in the industry 

Let us know if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover next time!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Colleagues and friends, we wanted to recognize
the seriousness of this moment.
As we record this, there arewildfires in California and
there's been tremendous loss ofproperty and life.
Our hearts go out to all thoseaffected.
We can all help help.
Please consider donating to theRed Cross, the Los Angeles Fire
Department Foundation, the YMCA, habitat for Humanity.

(00:33):
Team Rubicon and many othersare out there helping the people
in need.
Here at the podcast, jim and Idecided to play offshore energy
trivia early on inaugurationmorning.
We'll get into a more seriousdiscussion about the impacts of
the presidential memorandum nextweek, so until then, come play

(00:57):
along with us, see how well wedo and tell us where you're
doing better.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
I'm Jim Bennett and I have over 40 years of
experience developing energy inthe ocean.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
I'm Ian Valpero and I've spent the last 20 years
developing offshore energyprojects around the world, and
this is the Offshore EnergyPodcast.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Hey, Ian you there.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Hey Jim, good morning , good.
Hey Ian you there.
Hey Jim, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
I'm doing really well.
I'm a little tuckered.
I've been shoveling snow thismorning you know I live up north
and it's gotten cold.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, I live in the Washington area and it's cold.
We've had a little snow, butthey're all going indoors for
the inauguration today.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Well, and that's today too.
Yeah, Congratulations.
Happy Inauguration Day.
Here's to America.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Here's to America, indeed, okay, all right.
Well, hey, this episode we'renot going to be trying to take
on some very heavy issues thatare going to be addressed,
probably with a bunch of day oneexecutive orders We'll see but
we'll take kind of a step backon information and offshore

(02:17):
energy knowledge and have alittle fun with some word games
and some definitions and kind ofask each other some questions,
and I think this would be ofgreat benefit to people who are
new to the industry, people whoare new to the technology.
But I also think it would be areal knowledge check for folks

(02:39):
that are not, and also for us.
Boy, I feel like it's going tobe a knowledge check for us, Jim
.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, it could be.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
I'm sure for some of them it definitely will be.
But that's all good, that's allgood.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Jim, when we were getting ready for this, what we
described is.
You asked me a couple ofquestions.
I asked you a couple ofquestions we're going to go
through this and I was wonderinghow I could get you with
something really good.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
but we'll see if we get there you will, but that's
and that's not the purpose.
So maybe we're just doing thisfor fun right, we'll invite the
listeners to keep score and letus know that's a great idea.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, Jim, because this was your great idea.
How about I ask you the firstquestion?
Shall I start out?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yes, but it's got to be first question.
This has got to be an easy one.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
All right, jim.
My first question what's awindmill?

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Oh well, we are getting pretty basic.
That is a very good question.
It comes up pretty regularly.
Windmill is the traditionalharnessing of the wind through
what you think of in theNetherlands, windmills for the
purpose of milling either saw,milling grain, whatever.

(04:03):
But it's not what we have andwhat we do in offshore wind
energy.
Those are wind turbines.
So I think that's the mainthing to keep in mind.
The windmill transfers theenergy to milling activities.
The turbine transfers theenergy into electricity.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
I still use the term windmill all the time, and
erroneously well, you nailed it,jim, but I was trying to be a
little tricky, and you mayrecall that I did live in the
netherlands for a while, and oh,that's right kinderdijk is this
really beautiful part of thenetherlands where they have a
whole bunch of historicwindmills that are still in
operation like 400 years later,and if you get the chance when

(04:45):
you're visiting the netherlands,go see it.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
It's beautiful, it's actually a magnificent since
actually I, I did, and it'salways shocking when you're over
in europe because everything isso much older and there was a
couple of windmills that werestill there from the 1600s yeah,
yeah amazing all right, so thatone was, but we're getting
started.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
All right, jim, this one's easy too, but I expect
you're going to knock this outof the park.
What is Bessie?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, bessie's a cow, you know, bessie?
I'm assuming you mean BSEE, theBureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement, whichis the sister agency to where I
used to work, the Bureau ofOcean Energy Management.
Basically, the differencebetween the two is that BOEM is

(05:35):
the federal agency responsiblefor planning and leasing and
planning approval, and BSEE iskind of the handoff agency, the
agency that actually overseesthe operations and activities of
offshore wind farm constructionand operation.
And I should mention thatthey're the offshoots of the

(05:57):
Minerals Management Service.
What was the MineralsManagement Service?
As a result of the Macondospill, a Deepwater Horizon spill
, the two agencies were split,so we have two agencies now.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Jim, what's a lease sale auction?

Speaker 2 (06:13):
What's a lease sale auction?
The term lease sale I pickedthat up from my years in oil and
gas operations and it'sbasically the sale of a lease
offering areas offshore to beleased not to be sold but to be
leased to the private sector fordevelopment of energy resources

(06:37):
, both oil and gas and wind.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
The auction is simply the mechanism that is used,

(07:07):
no-transcript, making sure thatthe public receives a fair
return for that privilege, and Iknow that you've experienced it
from the government, from theregulator side and certainly
from the private sector side,boy, there's a lot of science to

(07:31):
how you engage and bid in alease sale as well, too, lots of
different specialties that I'maware of of folks who have
helped prepare bids for leasesales, both kind of when the
things that jump to mind liketechnical assessment of the
resource, trying to understandthe context where we are
operating, but even in the humanfactors of bidding, and so
really, interesting, great point.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
A lot is involved for what is a relatively simple
auction process for us, but it'svery, very complicated in terms
of putting bids together.
All right, tell me about anoffshore wind farm farm,
particularly with respect towhat is turbine layout.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Oh my gosh.
Okay, all right, here we go.
Uh, offshore wind farm allright.
So this is the offshoreexpression of of an offshore
wind development.
Right, you have the offshorewind farm, which includes the
turbines and their foundations.
You have the inter-ray cablesconnecting them to an offshore

(08:29):
substation, and then thatoffshore substation exports
power onto shore, somewhere tointerconnect with the grid that
everybody thinks of, onshore,the turbine layout part.
That's interesting.
So let's see.
Well, I guess we'll start with,if you can think about space.
People typically want to lay outtheir wind farm and their

(08:51):
turbines, the individual points,in a regular pattern.
But you also want to make surethat you optimize the turbine
layout for the wind, theresource itself, and I am no
expert in this, for sure.
So, but I think you know,generally you want to ensure
that as many of the turbines getas much of the wind as possible

(09:13):
.
You know, and I guess, theprevailing winds and the
dominant winds, so you need tounderstand the seasonal wind
pattern and then you space themin such a way that you probably
stagger them I think kind oflike a parallelogram is commonly
used so that as many of themget the first part of the wind.
You know they're cutting intothe wind as possible.

(09:38):
I think theoretically thespacing between turbines is
often something like six to 10diameters of the turbine rotor.
Downstream you don't have a lotof wake effects or wake losses.
But there are other reasonsthat you change that spacing
tube.
There are regulatory reasons,like I mentioned, and I think in
the US in the earliest windfarms that we had offshore it

(10:00):
was like one nautical milebetween turbines was a common
spacing.
But there are probably otherconsiderations that you have for
that too.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, I think just to add to that, based on our
experience particularly withvineyard wind and the spacing
that occurred up there you knowthese are commercial fishing
concerns are a large part ofthat and it doesn't really have
to do with the wind oroptimization or anything else.
It's an other consideration,like navigation.

(10:29):
The layout is determined by alot of different factors and
they're not always clear-cut orintuitive and the technical
assessment of the site.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
There may be things on the seafloor or in the
seafloor that make itparticularly hard to put a
foundation right in that space.
And so I think as a developerprogresses their understanding
of the site with site assessmentactivities and geophysical and
geotechnical work, then theyhave to even microtune it, so to

(11:00):
speak, so that they don't runinto complexities with putting
stuff into the seafloor that'sgot to support all that strength
of the turbine above.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Speaking of putting stuff into the seafloor, I've
got another one for you.
Okay, tell me about a jack-uprig, Jack-up rigs.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Like in oil and gas we use jack-up rigs.
It's a hull that's kind of likea ship, or sometimes it's more
like a barge, and it's got thesemovable legs, these giant legs
that you can pull up so thatthey're out of you know, out of
the water.
But you can also lower theminto the seafloor and in fact

(11:40):
drive them into the seafloorwith extra weight and ballast so
that they serve as, like youknow, the legs of a chair.
They're firmly affixed to theseafloor.
Then the hull can actuallyratchet its way up from that and
move its way up the legs untilit's above the surface of the

(12:00):
water and, you know, eventuallycreates an air gap underneath
you know the surface of thewater and eventually creates an
air gap underneath the surfaceof the sea and the hull of the
vessel is separate and distantand that creates a really stable
platform for work.
Now, you said jack-up rig, andrig denotes drilling activity,
but there are also jack-upplatforms that might do other

(12:21):
activities, like for offshorewind, you can use a jackup
platform to do um, you know, tocreate this um place where you
might have a big crane that'sable to pick up monopiles or
foundation pieces and move themonto the you know, onto the
foundation.
Our first uh, george hw bushpresident.
He owned a company calledzapata Offshore that worked in

(12:44):
the Gulf of Mexico and they wereone of the first early
companies that used jack-up rigsto explore for oil and gas in
the Gulf of Mexico.
Those and the currentgeneration are still what we
would call shallower waters.
They're like 300-foot waterdepth.
Maximum you think about theirdepth or their limitation of

(13:05):
working is the length of thoselegs that they have sticking up
when they're not fixed inposition yeah I know they make
bigger ones around the world.
Some of them probably go totwice that depth, like 600 feet,
but they're generally down toabout that depth.
If you go to deeper waters thenobviously the jackup rigs won't
work, and then if you want workoffshore, you start to get to

(13:26):
things that have dynamicpositioning and drill ships and
semi-submersibles.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
The jack-up rigs are very peculiar-looking things in
shore, especially if you're notin and living in the Gulf of
Mexico.
They're very, very largevertical structures.
This is important because ofbridges, Like in the Northeast,
you have to have port facilitiesthat are typically outside

(13:58):
bridges because Jacob Riggs andother structures, the monopoles
et cetera, are so, so tall andthey're very odd going out and
then the legs actually, whichare vertical and into the sky,
turn around and get driven down,as you said before, to the
seafloor to support thestructure.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
If you ever get a chance to go down to Port
Fouchon and the end of Louisianaright, which is the port that
services a lot of the oil andgas industry down there,
depending upon, you know howbusy the industry is, but
there's a couple of spots wherethe road down there Louisiana
Highway 1, is elevated andyou'll get up and you'll be able
to see pretty far, because it'spretty flat down there, and you

(14:39):
can see Jacob rigs and vesselslined up, you know, preparing
themselves for work and it's areally interesting sight.
Like they don't, they lookweird, you know they catch your
eye because it's not what youwould expect a ship to look like
, because they have those bigstructures.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
This is so interesting.
We're getting into a lot of,probably a lot more detail than
time is going to allow, butthat's all right, I just want to
note.
I can't help but note.
You mentioned Port Fouchon andthe elevated highway and
everything In terms of theprogram that I was involved in
for so many years, both theenvironmental, the oil and gas

(15:18):
and the wind.
Port Fouchon was a study aboutthe road and the road capacity
and the oil industry, what itneeded and what the community
and what the highway systemneeded in order to support that
industry.
And on the basis of the studywork that the government did,

(15:40):
funding was created in order tomake sure that that roadway had
the capacity to deal with themany, many trips of very, very
large vehicles and equipment.
Let's jump from the technicaland the physical to break-even
point.
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Break-even point Are you talking about, like in
project finance and economicreturn calculations, is that?

Speaker 2 (16:04):
where you're headed.
That's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
We're jumping from physical to economic.
Jeez, okay, yeah, otherwise Ithink maybe surfers have another
idea of what a break-even isyeah it's probably true, and so
that's when the revenuegenerated from the project
exactly equals the total costsincurred.
Up to that point, you have tospend a lot of money and effort,

(16:27):
including capitalization,building things, before there's
ever the beginning of a returnof revenue generated from that
asset, right?
So you have all of thisfront-end work that gets done
that you have to pay for, likeplanning, site assessments,
resource assessments, surveys.

(16:48):
Eventually you get to designand engineering and eventually
you get to construction and youget a financial investment
decision and you build theproject.
And then you have to go buildit and construct it offshore and
then you have to commission itand then finally, somewhere down
the line, you start to make areturn.
Now that when you first startto make a return like first oil

(17:11):
we would call it in the oil andgas industry, maybe in offshore
wind, we're calling it firstelectron now that's not even
breakeven.
You still got to producerevenue for a long time before
you pay back all of that upfrontcapitalization revenue for a
long time before you pay backall of that upfront
capitalization.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
And what are we looking?

Speaker 1 (17:31):
at at that point the big P word profit.
That's often years down fromthat first revenue return.
It's critical for understandinghow much and how long you're
going to tie up your investmentfunds in a development.
Obviously you'd want to do themas soon as possible.
You'd wish your breakeven pointwas, you know, was that day two
after it starts.

(17:52):
But in many cases with these,like for offshore wind, it's
well into the future.
And so breakeven is affected bystuff like how complex the
project is.
You know both the type oftechnology to be deployed as
well as the environment thatit's got to operate in.
Obviously the resource right.
If you didn't do a really goodassessment of the resource,

(18:14):
you're not going to have a greatunderstanding of where your
breakeven cost is.
And stuff like yourcapitalization and capital costs
and ultimately operating costs.
Those all affect breakeeven.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yep, well, that's pretty good.
I think we're doing all righthere.
I think we've gone six for six.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
So All right, jim, my turn right.
I get to ask you a couple, jim.
Who or what is FDR and FIR?

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Okay, Obviously FDR is Franklin Delano.
Roosevelt, you can't get awayfrom that.
Fdr and FIR refer to activitieswell into the process.
Remember, the process ismultiple years of identifying
possible offshore locations forwind farm, doing environmental

(19:07):
studies, environmental analysisleading up to an auction, a
lease sale and an auction andafter that, site assessment,
many, multiple years of siteassessment, all of which feeds
into the development of aconstruction and operations plan

(19:27):
, which is a big event, andapproval of that plan by the
Bureau of Ocean EnergyManagement is a real watershed
event need to be generated theFDR, which is the Facility

(19:49):
Design Report, which is muchmore detailed engineering
information about what's goingto be done than what is
contained in the Constructionand Operations Plan.
Construction and OperationsPlan provides the overall
umbrella and then the FacilityDesign Report provides a lot of
the engineering details.

(20:10):
The FIR and let's talk about theFDR and the FIR in the context
of oil and gas.
They mean something a littlebit different or can be used as
different acronyms in oil andgas, but for wind, as I just
said, it's the Facility DesignReport.
And then the FIR is theFabrication and Installation

(20:31):
Report.
Exactly how are you going toput all the pieces together, get
them on site, take themoffshore and what kind of
activities, which is a prettyextensive undertaking to put all

(20:59):
that information together hasapproval authority for
construction and operationsplans.
Like I said, which is a keyevent, they do not approve
technically the FDR and FIR.
Yeah, they basically do notobject and that means without
getting too much into it, itmeans that it's not an action

(21:23):
and it doesn't requireenvironmental review or
approvals that it otherwisewould.
So that's getting into a littleof the bureaucracy.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
That's where we got you here, Jim.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
But it's important.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
But it's important.
This one is a little broader,so let's see how you do, jim,
what's landfall, landfall.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Well, in's landfall, landfall.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Well, in the context of… Very wide open.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, that's pretty wide open.
That could mean a lot of things, everything from Christopher
Columbus to….
Landfall is essentially wherethe cabling system that carries
the little electrons that aretraveling very, very quickly

(22:12):
through a cable to shore and thelandfall is where that cable or
, in oil and gas parlance, thatpipeline, where it hits shore.
And there's a lot ofconsiderations that go into that
.
But I think the important thingin terms of the wind program or

(22:34):
the oil and gas program is thatthe jurisdiction for activities
offshore rests with the federalgovernment and the Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management or BOEM.
But that jurisdiction ends atthree miles offshore where you
move into state waters.
So landfall becomes much moreof a state approval process and

(23:00):
that is a demand on thedeveloper, because they have to
move into a whole differentarena of reviewers, a whole
different set of issues and awhole different set of
constituencies.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Next one.
This is easy for you, come on.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
What's a high bid?
In the auction process thatBOEM conducts conventionally or
traditionally, you think of itas the winning bid, as the
winner of the process with thehighest numerical value.

(23:40):
They win the product, just likeat an auction where you auction
off art or anything else ormodel trains for your grandkids.
I think it's important to notethat there has been a change in
the auction process with BOM andthat what's actually paid now

(24:01):
is the second highest bid, notthe highest bid.
The highest bid identifies thewinner of the auction, but they
actually don't pay the high bid.
They pay the same amount thatwhoever else would have been
willing to pay.
It's evidently fairer and morereasonable from an auction and

(24:25):
an economic standpoint Notsaying I fully understand it.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, but you got it.
I can't trick you with any ofthese.
You got all the details, jim.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Nice job Well let me ask you a couple yeah yeah,
let's see where I go.
How about non-recourse?

Speaker 1 (24:42):
finance.
Okay, and non-recourseInteresting, non-recourse
finance All right, where do Istart with this?
All right, so building projectsoffshore costs a lot.
We talked a little bit aboutthe cost curve, right, and that.
So we would say those arecommonly very capital and
upfront capital intensive Costsa lot.
We talked a little bit aboutthe cost curve and that we would
say those are commonly verycapital and upfront capital

(25:05):
intensive Finance is the I'mgoing to kind of break this down
this way finance is theopportunity to finance or create
capital for your project, oftenfrom loans from different
lending institutions, and thoseare usually paid for from the

(25:26):
project itself.
Right, project finance usuallyrequires a development to have a

(25:47):
sponsor, a developer oftenlenders and a special purpose
vehicle set up as the projectitself which limits the
liability of the developers andthe project to just the assets
and activities of the project.
That helps set up a legalstructure.
Lenders want to lend money intoa special purpose vehicle to
build a project because theyfind a good opportunity for

(26:07):
economic return Sometimes.
But non-recourse finance meansnon-recourse you don't have
recourse, if something goeswrong, you don't get your money
back.
And so you could see thetension.
Right, developers would love toget all non-recourse finance.
Lenders wouldn't necessarilywant to give all recourse

(26:28):
finance because they want tomake sure that they get their
money back no matter what.
I should add that non-recoursefinance usually costs more than
finance that has recourse toright.
A lender is going to charge youa higher interest rate because
they can't get their money back,so there's a transfer of risk
there that's going on.
Finance itself is the key tounlocking enough capital to go

(26:53):
build these giant projectsoffshore, like oil and gas, like
offshore wind farms.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I'm going to revert to acronyms, because you did
that to me with FDR and FIR.
So tell me about EPC.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
EPC stands for Engineering, procurement and
Construction.
Oftentimes in renewablesprojects, the project developer
may be looking for an EPCcontractor as someone who is
able to do all of theengineering and design, the
procurement of materials andultimately the construction of

(27:30):
the facility in one entity.
They can be inexpensive, theycan manage a lot of the risk
because they've done it lots oftimes before, and the developer
finds this kind of single-pointsolution to go develop their
project.
For offshore energy andparticularly oil and gas, it's a
little bit different becauseoftentimes what you're going

(27:53):
after, especially in the companyI used to work for is really
challenging maybe world's firstkind of situation and so you
don't necessarily find externalEPCs.
You do a lot of the at leastthe E and the P inside the
company, the engineering and theprocurement right.
You want to make sure that youare the best in the world at
that sort of offshore structureengineering and the procurement

(28:15):
of big materials.
The construction might stillfall to another organization or
another external party, anothercompany, and so finding the
right balance of in-house versusepc for all of that activity
really depends upon the maturityof the sector, what you know
other companies are available inthe sector and the risk

(28:36):
tolerance of the developer andlet's switch from the processes
and the economics and everything.
Yeah, I feel like you're askingme.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Let's get back to technology.
Can you tell me about acompliant tower?

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Oh, compliant towers.
I love compliant towers.
I feel like, why am I soexcited to talk about this?
Compliant towers are atechnology that's been used in
offshore production of oil andgas and it was used, I think,
like the first structure was inthe early 1980s in the Gulf of
Mexico Actually I think it wasExxon's LENA platform and a

(29:18):
compliant tower is fixed all theway down, you know, through
from the sea surface all the wayto the sea floor.
But it's a little bit different.
It's compliant in that itdeflects, you know, horizontally
to deal with the forces ofwater, you know, and waves and

(29:39):
stuff on it, rather than beingso rigid and fixed that it just
overcomes them.
The reason why compliant towerswere attempted is because by
doing that, if you have drillingequipment and particularly
risers that can flex along withthe tower, it's much smaller,

(30:01):
there's less steel involved inbuilding something that can bend
and move with the waves andcurrents than with something
that has to be rigidly fixedlike you think of normal four
post-jacketed structures.
And so they started to trycompliant towers for deeper and
deeper water when they hadflexible risers that were able

(30:22):
to also move with the tower.
You know like bamboo is areally resilient plant that
bamboo, when it's growingnaturally can really flex and
move with the wind.
It grows really high but itkeeps moving and bamboo is kind
of a good analogy for thiscompliant tower design that

(30:43):
people were using.
I haven't heard of anybody usingcompliant towers for offshore
wind.
Folks.
Write in if you do know,because there may be in Europe.
I'm just unaware of them, butthey're a really interesting
solution.
For oil and gas the challengeswere largely around the risers.
You can't have a pipe carryinghydrocarbons up through the

(31:06):
water column that moves so muchit breaks Tension.
Leg platforms, for example ineven deeper water, have anchors
and mooring systems thatliterally pull the platform down
so that it doesn't deflect asmuch and the risers survive the
motions of the TLP at thesurface.
Like the need between findingflexible cables versus finding

(31:29):
flexible risers, I think is areally interesting challenge to
solve.
But I bet the potential isthere for them to be able to
survive larger deformations thansteel pipe would.
So compliant towers these arereally fun, I'm glad you asked
me that.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
I would think that would be a real technical
challenge of compliant towersfor the wind and energy because
there's so much more motion andstuff going on and I think it's
kind of the challenge and I'm noengineer, but I think it's kind
of the challenge that floatinguh uh faces because of all the
all the motion and the movementthat has to occur yeah, I think

(32:07):
you're right.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
I think that's that compliant towers may be an
option to consider for floatingopportunities, not for, like
monopile fixed, but somewherewhere you got to find that right
balance of of performance anddeflection versus the amount of
steel that you'd have to buildto fix something on the seafloor
rigidly.
My term All right, jim R-O-D.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Record of Decision.
It's not an oil and gas term,it's not really a wind energy
term.
It is a NEPA term.
It is a National EnvironmentalPolicy Act term associated with
the issuance of an environmentalimpact statement, which many of
the actions associated bothwith oil and gas and with wind

(32:55):
require, and geez, so many otherthings as well require.
It is a step at the end of theprocess of analysis, after the
evaluation of alternatives, thatcreates a record of the
decision that was made based onall of that analysis.
In the case of wind energy,you've got kind of a duplication

(33:18):
process going on.
You've got kind of aduplication process going on.
It's not exactly the same, butthe construction operations plan
is subject to the approval ofthe Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management, bureau of OceanEnergy Management Construction

(33:39):
and operations plan approval.
That action requires thepreparation of an EIS and so has
a record of decision.
So there's kind of they're boththe same the record of decision
and the approval of the plan,but the record of decision is
the action that is consistentwith the National Environmental
Policy Act process.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
And Jim, you're helping clarify it for me too,
so I appreciate it, and thatrecord of decision is
specifically to address theenvironmental compliance that
NEPA requires.
Like that, that means it's partof it.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
It's part of it in so far as is mitigation that has
to occur, that is identified inthe NEPA process.
It's it's incorporated into therecord of decision and is
reflected in the action that isgoing to be pursued.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thank you, Jim.
All right, now here's a broadone for you.
All right, I want to see whereyou head with this, Jim.
What's deep water?

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Deep water is anything over your head In many
cases yeah.
Yeah, real quickly.
Deep water has a couple ofdifferent meanings.
It's different in the oil andgas arena than it is in the wind

(34:54):
arena.
But deep water in the Gulf ofMexico connotes a lot of
different things because the oiland gas program in the Gulf of
Mexico, which produces like 25%of domestic energy production,
was basically restricted toshallow waters up until the
technology got to the pointwhere they could go into deep

(35:17):
waters I believe it was themid-late 80s could go into deep
waters.
I believe this was mid-late 80sand it changed things
dramatically because we wereable to access in deep water for
oil and gas.
We were able to access hugereserves.
Unfortunately, it didn't comewithout cost.
Deepwater Horizon in Macondowas one of the activities that

(35:39):
was operating in deep water, butit also the deep water in the

(36:06):
Gulf of Mexico at about 1,000feet or 300 meters is what
really turned around the oilindustry in a very, very big way
and in many ways is responsiblefor the change from dependency
on foreign oil from the 70s and80s to the dominance that we're
experiencing today.
We're a net exporter, which ishuge.
For wind it has a completelydifferent meaning and for wind
at about 60 meters of depth.
That's kind of the extent ofconventional fixed-bottom

(36:31):
platforms.
Beyond 60 meters or so you haveto go to floating platforms.
You have to go to a differenttechnology, same as in the Gulf
of Mexico.
It's a different technology.
But it's a totally differenttechnology for wind.
So deep water for wind is fromabout 60 meters onward.

(36:52):
I'm not sure what the mileagefigure is for that.
I knew I should have that aswell, but that is why we're
talking about deep water inCalifornia, because the shelf
drops off so quickly.
That's why we're talking aboutdeep water in the Gulf of Maine,
because it's deeper water withregard to wind energy

(37:14):
development and will requirefloating technology as opposed
to conventional fixed bottomtechnology.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
And, jim, I love your .
You know you kind of nailed ittoo.
I appreciate it.
As an oceanographer, I used tothink of it as you know, this is
the continental shelf.
Then there's the continentalshelf and the place right where
it occurs, the continental break.
That's where deep water starts.
So there's this kind ofgeological definition, but
you're really focusing on the,the, the difference in the

(37:43):
technology that needs to bedeployed.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
And in the program the application of the program
activities.
The term has a differentmeaning.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Absolutely, and it's.
You know.
People have built jacketedfixed structures to the seafloor
far deeper than 60 meters,right, but it's.
But there's a lot of steel,steel involved and I think the
general assessment is that itdoesn't become commercially
economic if you're building alot of offshore wind farms With
so much steel in the water.
They just price themselves outof the market, right?
I remember Shell's Bullwinkleand for those of you online, you

(38:16):
know Google Bullwinkle and takea look at Bullwinkle 1,800 feet
and it was an all steel latticestructure and it's amazing to
see there's like these reallyfamous pictures of the tow out
from that passing through Texasand you get a sense of the size
of what goes on offshore Windenergy area Jim.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Wind energy area.
Jim Wind energy area In theprocess of moving forward with
offshore wind call areas, wherethe government goes out and

(39:03):
calls for information about verylarge areas and the process is
basically winnowing down, justlike it is in the oil and gas
program, winnowing down from alarge area, given the
constraints and conflicts thatmight exist, to smaller and
smaller areas, and sometimesthese terms fall over each other

(39:25):
and are essentially the same.
But the government, throughBOEM, after a call and
identification of information,needs examination of that
information will identify a windenergy area which is something
less than the call area I'moversimplifying here a little

(39:47):
bit Something less than the callarea but typically is larger
than what ends up being offeredfor lease.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
The specific box for lease.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
yeah, yeah, because the wind energy area then goes
back out for additionalinformation.
What are we going to, you know?
Are there additional areas thatwe need to eliminate?
Yeah, because the wind energyarea then goes back out for
additional information.
What are we going to, you know?
Are there additional areas thatwe need to eliminate?
What are the concerns?
And the wind energy areaultimately becomes a proposed
lease area.
The proposed lease area alsogoes out for public review and

(40:17):
you end up with a final leasearea that goes to auction.
So the wind energy area is onestep in between, winnowing down
to the point where you have alease area that actually goes
out to auction, is leased andeventually has a wind farm

(40:37):
constructed on it.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Jim, you are nailing these.
I'm really impressed, let'skeep going.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well, let me, let me, let me, let's get back to you
then, because you're nailingthem just as well, and let's,
but, but you're also nailing theones that I'm a little less
confident of, and one of thethings that things that I
learned when I came into theprogram from a soft side as

(41:07):
opposed to a scientific side,was geophysical and geotechnical
data, and it took me thelongest time to figure out what
are they talking about, and theacronym of G&G came along and
that solved everything for me.
But what is that geophysical andgeotechnical?

Speaker 1 (41:29):
So let's see.
So where do we start with thisone?
So geophysical work are waysthat you survey the environment
using sound.
It's common in oil and gas,like we've been talking about.
It's common in offshore windand like when you're building
something offshore too, if youwere building a new port or
installing a large break wall orsomething, you have to

(41:52):
understand what's going on andwhat the seafloor looks like.
Types of geophysical activityWell, think about, like
bathymetry, right, understandingthe topography of the seafloor,
understanding what might be onthe seafloor.
You might do something likeside scan, sonar to understand
are the big rocks, are theresmaller rocks?

(42:14):
Some things you can tell andsome things you can't.
You might also be interested inwhat's going on under the sea
floor, and there are other typesof geophysical work that you do
to identify shallow hazards.
For example, in oil and gas, ashallow hazard might be
something like a pocket oftrapped gas, and you want to
understand if that's therebecause you don't want to drill

(42:36):
into it.
Geophysical also includes thestuff for exploring for deep
into the earth, right, and soyou think about geophysical
surveys using large air guns,they're called that create a
loud, impulsive sound, thatbasically, you create that sound
and you have streamers runningout behind the vessel and you

(43:00):
listen for its reflections andthat's literally telling you
something about what occurs deepinside, under the seafloor
surface, for oil and gas.
You can be looking miles down.
You know it's really amazing,the technologies that exist For
offshore wind.
You don't need to look that fardown with geophysical work.

(43:20):
You need to understand theseafloor, what it's made of,
what its topography is, itspotential for moving around and
probably looking for shallowhazards too.
Now, geotechnical then, is thatsampling?
So you understand themechanical properties of the
seafloor and some distance belowthat surface into the seafloor,
and you would be doinggeotechnical work in offshore

(43:43):
wind, for example, to understandwhat you're going to put that
foundation into.
Is there granite under there oris it soft, unconsolidated
sediments?
You need to know the differenceof what lies beneath the
surface and you need tounderstand it really well so you
can engineer a structure rightthat can be very heavy and have
very different moments ofmomentum, that can survive all

(44:07):
of the forces that nature willput upon it.
So G and G.
G and G are things that we doin the offshore industry
generally that help usunderstand safety hazards, help
us understand the engineeringcharacteristics of what needs to
be designed and built in place.
You use that also to helpunderstand if there are

(44:27):
sensitive habitats or some otherthings on the seafloor, and
really they're foundations ofknowledge that you need to build
offshore projects, offshore.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I'm not sure it's that much less complicated than
I remember it, but yeah, thankyou, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
You know, the best way to understand what's going
on in the ocean is using thesame way that marine mammals and
marine animals use, which issound.
So geophysical is all aboutdifferent kinds of sounds and
how it interacts with you.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
All right, well, let's switch over to biology.
Then Tell me about IHAs.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
IHA Incidental Harassment Authorization.
Is that where you're headed,jim?

Speaker 2 (45:11):
I don't know of any other acronym for that.
I don't either.
I other rep acronym for that Idon't.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
I don't either.
I'm just stalling for time, allright, all right, uh, ihas,
yeah, so incidental harassmentauthorization?
Um well, okay, so let's startwhere I left off the other one.
If you're doing somethingoffshore that has the potential
to disturb marine animals, andparticularly marine mammals, you

(45:40):
need to understand thepotential for that to occur, you
need to understand whether ornot you can avoid that and you
need to understand whether youpotentially incidentally harass
marine mammals during youractivities.
Now, incidental is a reallyimportant point of this.
I think it's not intentionalharassment.

(46:03):
You're not making noise toscare away marine mammals,
whales or seals or something.
It's incidental in theactivities that you need to
perform, to do your offshoreactivities and build something
safely offshore.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
So that's part of it who says, who says something is
who makes that determinationyeah, yeah, which agency jim?

Speaker 1 (46:29):
I think that's where you're headed dang it.
Uh, all right.
So for mammals there are twoseparate agencies.
One is NOAA, the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and theyauthorize IHAs or other
incidental takes of marinemammals according to the Marine
Mammal Protection Act, the MMPA.

(46:49):
There are a couple of marinemammals that are also managed by
the Us department of fish andwildlife, and I'm thinking very
specifically of the pinnipedsright, like walrus and a couple
of others, and I'm I'm sayingthat because I used to do work
in alaska and there are thoseother kinds of pinnipeds there,

(47:12):
and so those are the agenciesand they're responsible to
ensure that the activities thatoccur don't cause more harm than
necessary and don't causeactual take of marine mammals.
Right, this harassment term getsreally complicated.
I'll just start with it.
It's meant to be a disturbanceto the marine mammal, like, do

(47:36):
you affect some of its naturalbehavior?
You might cause it to moveright and swim away, literally,
or maybe you cause it to changeits behavior, like feeding,
because you're doing somethingthat's annoying offshore to them
.
I think ultimately, I know I'manthropomorphizing it, but
you're doing something thatcauses them to change their

(47:56):
behavior.
That's annoying offshore tothem.
I think ultimately, I know I'manthropomorphizing it, but
you're doing something thatcauses them to change the
behavior.
The process of going and gettingan incidental harassment
authorization ensures that thoseactivities don't harm too many.
There's like a small numbersassessment in that to make sure
you're not harming too many ofthe population, that you have no
more than a negligible impacton a marine mammal species or

(48:18):
stock and that you don't haveany unmitigatable adverse
impacts.
Right, so you can't cause, youknow, population change by the
activities that occur offshore.
And again, this is notintentional and it's certainly
not.
Take is used in other ways too.
Right, in hunting.

(48:39):
The take means something else,but it ensures that you can't
have any of those kinds ofactivities as well.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Yeah, the reason I ask about the who provides that
authorization is it's a greatexample.
We talk all the time about howimportant the Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management is with regardto offshore wind, but this is a
process that is a differentfederal agency on endangered
species or whatever the resourcemight be, and that expertise is

(49:25):
brought to bear with theauthorization that they provide,
as opposed to the authorizationthat the agency, the action
agency, in this case BOEM wouldprovide and that sometimes
causes problems.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Also, in some cases, congressional legislation
requires a certain agency to beresponsible for that natural
resource, and so, in this case,in fact, the MMPA does require
NOAA to be responsible formanaging that resource, and in
many instances, most, if not all, the mitigation that's

(49:57):
identified by that agency'sexpertise is what gets
incorporated into the decisionthat's made by the action agency
, by Bureau of Ocean EnergyManagement.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
How about another one , for you See, if there's a deer
in the headlights?
Response here Grid enhancingtechnologies.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Okay, we've jumped out of the water, I think,
generally in the US at least.
Okay, grid enhancingtechnologies.
Grid enhancing technologies Allright, where do I want to start
?
Grid enhancing technologies areways that we can increase the
ability of our power grid tocarry energy between places.

(50:39):
Maybe that's good.
Somebody clear that up.
I'm sure an electrical engineerwill do much better with
addressing that.
But they tend to be thetechnologies that we can employ
with existing infrastructurerather than just building
additional new, for example,transmission systems, right?
So grid enhancing technologiesare things like where you can

(51:03):
monitor the weather tounderstand, you know, the
potential heat loss of thetransmission cables carrying
power for different areas andyou can actually adjust the
amount of power that it cancarry to be maximized in real
time based upon the weather.

(51:24):
I've even seen some pretty coolsystems that actively visually
monitor cables, like stretchedbetween transmission towers, and
they monitor the amount ofdeflection in the cable, which
is an indication of how hot thecable is.
Right, as it gets hot, as itheats up, it deflects more and
it hangs lower, so to speak.

(51:45):
And you can use those tools tohelp monitor and make the grid
the most efficient it can bewhile still being safe in real
time, and so this is kind of awhole portfolio of technologies
that are being deployed bydifferent utilities to help the

(52:05):
transmission system meet thechallenges and the I guess the
key challenge of new powercoming on in new places.
All right, jim, I feel like man, this is easy for you.
But, jim, permitting, tell meabout permitting and maybe why

(52:27):
sometimes we don't always usethat specifically and correctly.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Well, permitting, as you know, is the term that's
applied to oh geez we've got toget so many permits In some
cases.
Some of the projects aretypically projects that run up
to 20 separate quote-unquotepermits up to 20 separate

(52:55):
quote-unquote permits and theterm permitting is applied
generally to that activity ofgetting all of the
authorizations that arenecessary in order to be moving
forward to construct a facilityoffshore and, like I said, for
an offshore wind farm, thatcould be 20 different permits.
Oddly enough and I use the termin the sense of the whole

(53:18):
process of getting all of thosepermits, even though my
background is with the Bureau ofOcean Energy Management and,
oddly enough, the Bureau ofOcean Energy Management doesn't
actually issue any permits theBureau of Ocean Energy
Management issues leases, whichis the result of a long process

(53:39):
that collects a lot of theinformation that would be
associated with permitting, andthen the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management also issues a planapproval, which is not quite the
same as a permit, and that'sonly two actions out of 20 or so
where other agencies have muchmore specific permitting

(54:02):
requirements.
So, to make a long story short,the point is that permitting is
a very large process thatinvolves a lot of both federal
and state and, in many cases,local agencies in order to put
the authorization in place for alessee someone who holds a

(54:24):
lease to go offshore andactually construct a wind farm.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Jim, jump right back in.
What's a cod?
And I don't mean, I don't meangadeus, I don't mean the fish,
the fish.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
That refers to the commercial operations date.
I think it's very importantfrom an economic standpoint from
when revenue starts to getgenerated.
Conceptually it's very simpleyou just throw in 100 wind
turbines offshore and then youflip the switch and they all

(55:02):
start generating electricityinto the grid.
Of course it's not as simple asthat, but in theory that's the
commercial operations date whenthat starts.
A couple of examples the Seavalproject off of Virginia.
There are a lot of requirementsand there was only two turbines

(55:25):
but certain requirements had tobe fulfilled after the turbines
were actually spinning andgenerating electricity.
After the turbines wereactually spinning and generating
electricity, well, you can'treally fulfill those
requirements and shut down theturbines and start them up again
.
So the commercial operationsdate gets moved up and the
requirements are filledafterwards.
I think you've got a similarsituation for Vineyard and a

(56:00):
number of other projects,including the other Seavow
project, the two gig projectoffshore.
That it's not just a singleproject that gets built and you
flip the switch.
It's multiple projects that arephased and even the individual
projects may be coming online inan incremental fashion.
So it's an idea that's criticalfor financing and the economics

(56:25):
but it's not as simple as itsounds.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah, and you went there at the end too.
And commercial operations datais one of those milestones that
a lot of contractual terms arebased off of and yeah, I'm
thinking of a particular examplein LNG on the Gulf Coast and
commercial operations date andwhen that is can be surprisingly
more difficult to determine.

(56:51):
And if anybody wants to chatabout that, hit me offline.
But anyway, all right, jim, Igot another question for you and
this one's more technical.
All right, jim what's LIDAR?

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Oh, LIDAR, LIDAR.
Again, I'm not the technicalguy, I'm not the engineering guy
, but from a program standpoint,LIDAR is very, very interesting
.
Lidar is indeed a technology.
I think it stands for lightdetection and ranging.
It's the use of, I believe,infrared in order to assess wind
movement or mid-ocean datathrough a deployed buoy.

(57:31):
Why does this matter?
Well, it only came into commonuse in the late 20-teens and the
regulations for the offshoreprogram were written on the
basis of an assumption that aMET tower would need to be built
, a meteorological tower tocollect information offshore.
That's what was done for CapeWind.
They spent a lot of moneyputting a meteorological tower

(57:52):
to collect information offshore.
That's what was done for CapeWind.
They spent a lot of moneyputting a Met Tower in.
Met Towers have beenconstructed and never used,
because LIDAR buoy technologycame along and they were able to
do it at a tiny fraction of thecost.
And it made for a couple ofthings.

(58:12):
One it wasn't foreseen we hadto make changes to the
regulatory structure in order toaccommodate it.
It changed the permittingrequirements.
Are we really interested inpermitting buoys offshore?
Is that really what we're after?
Obviously, you put a structure,a bottom-founded structure

(58:34):
offshore on theout-of-continental shelf.
That's something that you havea responsibility.
But do you really need to gothrough a huge permitting
process to issue a permit for abuoy?
That is only temporary anyways.
So, anyways, it's a goodexample of the development of

(58:55):
technology and how it changesboth the economics, it changes
the regulatory environment andit's heavily used now.
It's a good example Lightdetection and ranging LIDAR.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
That was three for me , all right, and I think we're
getting towards the.
Okay, let me, let me give youthree more oh, now you're gonna
stump me.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
I shouldn't have said that, okay no, I think these
are more likely going to stumpme, but uh, we'll, we'll have
our uh.
Uh, the last one will beinteresting, because I think we
view it very differently.
But let's start with an acronymTRCF, and I'm not going to tell
you what the word is, because Iforget.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
No, I know that one.
I know TRCF.
Trcf is one of.
Trcf stands for totalrecordable case frequency and
it's one of the important safetymetrics that's used offshore.
Right, Having a lower TRCF isbetter.
Right, you want to have as fewcases of injury or harm to

(59:58):
people or safety issues aspossible.
Maybe I'll take this in a moregeneral direction, though.
That's what a TRCF isspecifically, but I think the
really important thing is thatworking offshore and putting
people offshore requires all ofus to be as safe as possible.
You know a culture of safety andcontinuous improvement is

(01:00:21):
critical for big organizations.
Understanding the risks of theactivities that you're
performing offshore, I think arereally important.
Back in the oil and gasindustry, you know safety was
job one.
We always said it.
There was a safety moment atthe beginning of every meeting
because we wanted to make surethat everybody was always
thinking how to do their job asefficiently and safely as

(01:00:44):
possible.
The other parts of a safetyportfolio are obviously
understanding the risks, jobhazard analyses, making sure
people are trained and competentin any activities that they
occur there's cool technologynow that can be used to help
protect people and a culture ofimprovement, and what we would

(01:01:08):
call the stop, work is alwaysrequired.
Right, Then that means anybodycan say stop, hold on, because
they think something might berisky.
And I think it's a reallyimportant part in oil and gas of
how we make sure thateveryone's perspective comes to
bear on keeping people safeoffshore.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
There's a term that you hear all the time, called
dispatchable.
Can you tell us what that means?

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Yeah, dispatchable is a generation that you can
dispatch.
You can turn it on or off ondemand, at the request of either
a market opportunity or, Iguess, in power.
It's often the grid operator tomake sure that the power

(01:02:00):
generation and load deliverymatches, and I think of things
like gas turbines.
You can start those up reallyquickly.
Other things take a little bitlonger, obviously.
Some things take a really longtime to start up and some things
you can't turn on and off, likemany renewables are
intermittent, and so there's abase load of stuff that you

(01:02:22):
don't necessarily spin up andspin down.
And then you kind of cream thetop by deploying dispatchable
generation during times ofincreased demand.
And I think the idea is thatyou are trying to dispatch
generation kind of according towhat is the most cost effective,
you know, and let's meet theneeds of the grid by using the

(01:02:46):
lowest cost sources as much aspossible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
One last one for you, which relates to that, and it's
something that I use all thetime, and it's an acronym and a
phrase that refers to thelevelized cost of energy, the
LCOE.
You want to tell me what thatis and why does it matter?

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
so levelized cost of energy is, or electricity is the
total cost of building theplant and operating it or the
facility divided by the amountof energy it produces, and so a
really efficient um facilitywould have a low lcoe facility

(01:03:36):
would have a low LCOE.
And, of course, lcoes usuallyused both to compare different
technologies to see which onesyou'd want to turn on and use.
Again, we talked about how gridoperators want to find the most
effective way to fill thedemand currently, and so they
have a good understanding of thecost of those.
It's also obviously influencespolicy, because we have this

(01:04:03):
difference in LCOE for differenttypes of ways to generate power
and electricity.
Lcoe is also this metric thatyou hear a lot about with when
we talk about how technologiesare maturing.
A brand new technology mighthave quite a high LCOE, but then
as that technology is deployedrepeatedly, grows to scale,

(01:04:29):
grows to understood risk.
Then the LCOE comes down, andif you look at the charts of
particularly renewable energiesover time, you see that most of
them follow this really greattrajectory right.
That they all continue todecrease LCOE as they continue

(01:04:51):
to be deployed at scale.
There's a couple of things thatmake that tricky right Things
that we deploy once and done,which is a lot like we do
nuclear.
Over the last 20 years in theUnited States, there's only been
a couple of projects, and sothe LCOE doesn't necessarily get
brought down.
And also LCOE doesn't justdecrease on its own after we

(01:05:16):
started talking about somethingand this is something
particularly that I think aboutfor offshore wind and floating
offshore wind in specific thatjust because we've been talking
about them doesn't mean LCOE isgoing to come down.
You know there's this timerelationship, but it's actually
you know it's the actualactivities on the ground to
build projects, to understandtheir complexities, and you know

(01:05:39):
their challenges sometimes thatmake it come down once the
industry gains experience foroffshore wind for some time now
is that the steadily and rapidlydecreasing costs associated
with development, the lcoe, andwe can only hope and continue to

(01:06:03):
work on making sure that itstays that way and continues to
continues to, indeed, yep, feelthe same way.
Jim.
Yep, so there, so I think jimam I off.
Am I off the clock here?
Is that it Off the?

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
clock.
Yeah Well, I think we've gottena lot of material out there.
I'm hoping that everybodythat's been viewing this or
hearing this has enjoyed it andhas learned from it.
I know I have in a couple ofinstances.
I think it's very important totake a step back on occasion to

(01:06:42):
make sure that we're stayingcurrent with the information and
the technology, and I invitewhoever has been listening in
those instances where we havemisstepped or failed to bring
out a very particular point, letus know.
We'll be happy to share it withour listeners.
Yeah, and so I think that's avery important point.

(01:07:07):
That's my last drop in theocean, ian.
What's yours?

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Oh, that's a good one .
Good one, jim.
I guess I think my last dropwill be.
I'll reflect too.
This was harder than I thoughtit'd be, even though we've both
been doing this for a while, andI think it's great that we're
both continuing to learn and tryto challenge ourselves and
understand new ways of thinking,and that's certainly what

(01:07:33):
solving the energy challenges ofthe future require of all of us
.
I know a lot of folks out thereare constantly coming up with
amazing ideas for how we canimprove the way that we produce
energy, including in itsenvironmental efficiency and
societal sustainability.
And hey, let's keep going right.
That's one of the things thatmakes this so fun is it's giant,

(01:07:55):
it's important and it'sever-changing.
So, yeah, I guess that's mysame last job, jim.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Well, absolutely, let's tell everybody about next
week.
We're wrapping this up on theheels of the inauguration and
the executive orders andpresidential memorandum that
came out on quote day one, andof course, everyone I'm sure at
this point is very familiar withthe one that addressed wind,

(01:08:23):
and a lot of people haveexpressed some great concern and
confusion about why and whatexactly all of this means.
We're going to take that upnext time.
We're going to take it up afterthe dust has settled a little
bit and take a look at some ofthe more longer term
opportunities and what it meansfor the wind industry.

(01:08:44):
So I'm looking forward to y'alljoining us then and we'll we'll
have a go at it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Yeah, we sure will, jim, and listeners too.
Keep commenting, keep postingand keep asking us questions or
offering topics.
Jim, it's been great seeing you.
Hope you have a great week.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
You too, and we'll look forward to talking with you
later in the week.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Okay, until we meet again on the next Offshore
Energy Podcast.
Bye, bye now.
Thank you.