Four Ways Offshore Companies are Leveraging DTN Weather APIs

Whether on an oil drilling rig, wind farm construction site, or dredging navigation channels, the weather on the open seas is a constant concern for offshore companies.

Tropical storms, monsoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, and rogue storm waves pose threats that offshore investors, commercial bidders, and operation managers must weigh. Safety concerns, operational efficiency, and project cost considerations are why many offshore companies use a weather API.

An API is a Data as a Service (Daas) product that enables different software applications to communicate and transfer data efficiently and effectively. For weather applications, an API offers several compelling advantages providing scalable and reliable data essential for delivering quality insights to customers.

To illustrate this, the DTN Marine Weather API offers:

• Forecast and Historical Marine Data: Provides access to both up-to-date forecasts and up to 3 years of historical marine weather data, aiding in informed decision-making for offshore operations.
• Comprehensive Weather Parameters: Offers a wide range of marine and atmospheric parameters including wave heights, wind speed, and current direction, essential for safe and efficient offshore activities.
• Route Planning: Supports complex route planning by providing marine conditions at multiple waypoints and timestamps, optimizing navigation and operational scheduling.
• High Accuracy and Reliability: Utilizes advanced metocean forecast models and continuously validates data with the latest satellite, buoy, and observation networks, ensuring high accuracy and reliability.
• Scalability: Designed to handle bulk requests and large datasets, making it suitable for extensive offshore projects that require robust and scalable data solutions.

These advantages empower the offshore industry to access the latest metocean information to make the most informed decisions, even as conditions change.

This article will demonstrate four ways offshore companies are leveraging weather APIs to reduce risks, improve safety, and boost profitability.

 

Sharpen Offshore Tender Bids

When companies bid for offshore contracts, for instance, construction of wind farms or oil and gas extraction under the ocean, the analysis includes specific project requirements and modeling of likely weather conditions, including maximum wave height, wind speed and wind direction. From there, they establish a timeframe for the work and scope limitations.

“A weather API empowers the offshore industry to access the latest metocean information… to make the most informed decisions, even as weather conditions change.”

Using a weather API, the bidder can integrate atmospheric and ocean data to further analyze likely conditions within their own enterprise systems, such as vessel and crew availability, or time necessary to complete the job.

Miscalculations can be costly. Consider a 50-day project with expectations for 15 days of downtime. Suppose a vessel cost $1M per day (which includes crew, materials and supplies), or a fixed price of $50 million. If that project has 20-25 downtime days due to incorrect metocean considerations, significant profits on that project could be sunk.

 

Minimize Unplanned Downtime

Analysis of metocean data integrated with a company’s assets, vessel requirements, and project specifications enables reasonable timelines for when the work is most likely to happen.

Making the right decision on optimal conditions is challenging but making them in marginal weather conditions is even worse. Get it wrong, and it can lead to unnecessary—and costly—downtime.

 

Improve Safety Decisions

Offshore work is inherently dangerous, even as companies strive for safety-first conditions. Extreme metocean conditions, such as high winds, rough seas, and swells, make it critical to always be aware of the environment. Federal safety regulations require offshore duty holders to collect information on sea conditions including foreseeable future operating conditions.

This is an excellent use-case of the benefits for a weather API.

“Making the right decision on optimal conditions is challenging but making them in marginal weather conditions is even worse.”

The DTN Marine Weather API delivers global weather insights coupled with proprietary wave models that not only monitor conditions at sea but also incorporate atmospheric winds that drive waves. Furthermore, the API includes detailed tidal information, a prerequisite when working in shallow water.

Integrating this information into an offshore company’s other data and/or enterprise solutions helps operation managers make more informed, efficient, and safe decisions, even for multiple offshore sites.

 

Protect Offshore Equipment

Weather monitoring, metocean, and vessel motion response parameters are critical for safe implementation of many offshore operations. For example, crane and mechanical handling operations, supply voyages, maintenance operations, and support from large semi-submersibles and jack-up drilling rigs performance deteriorates in poor weather conditions. Each has a different requirement for weather forecast data to allow appropriate decisions to be taken.

“From start to finish, weather data can have an impact on cost evaluation, operational efficiency, and safety.”

With the data obtained form the DTN Marine Weather API (MWA), the information is consolidated into project timelines for granular insight into metocean conditions at specific offshore locations.

From start to finish, weather data can have an impact on cost evaluation, operational efficiency, and safety. Investing in a reliable and scalable marine weather API provides an advantage with benefits including:

• Access to granular metocean data for different sites
• Better informed weather windows and fewer false alarms for more project uptime
• Reduced risk to equipment and life-threatening situations

Visit the the DTN developer portal catalog page to learn more about how companies can harness the power of integrated weather intelligence with and extensive suite easy to use and state-of-the-art APIs.