In just over a year, Edison Chouest Offshore shipyard is about to deliver the ECO Edison.
The first wind farm service operations vessel (SOV) in the United States.
The vessel is being built at ECO in-house shipyards located in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida, creating well over 300 new jobs, with components of the vessel being manufactured across 12 states including Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The construction of this new vessel highlights a very familiar story within the energy support industry with a new twist.
Instead of helping to build and service drilling rigs atop platforms, entire fields of wind energy farms are slated to be built on Gulf platforms and it’s starting to get attention among oil and gas support companies.
LSU Center for Energy's Greg Upton says this could be just the beginning for ECO Chouest Shipyard and windfarm developers in the Gulf.
“If they’re able to get that contract, and it’s able to pay for the building of that windfarm, then they will move forward. And as these projects start moving forward, that will then send a signal to the ship building market that ‘hey there’s market for these ships, let’s build more of them.’”
For Greg Upton, energy, where to find it, how to make it, sell it, ship it, continue to be at the forefront of Louisiana policy.
Upton says Louisiana has a finger all things that keep us on the move.
“The energy system is always evolving and will always evolve,” Upton says, “We can do solar, we can do wind, and we can continue to do oil and gas. And all of these are part of a broad energy ecosystem and a broad employment base, supporting that ecosystem.”
The construction of the ECO Edison is a first pivot to a coming giant investment in harnessing power from the wind in the Gulf of Mexico.
