Amid increasing national security concerns across Europe and the US, an offshore energy event organiser in the Netherlands has introduced cybersecurity and seabed security into its exhibition and conference programme this year.
Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference (OEEC), coming up on 25 and 26 November 2025, will feature two new pavilions on the exhibition floor, one dedicated to AI and cybersecurity and one where solutions for seabed security will be showcased. The OEEC 2025 conference programme will also see these and related topics discussed by expert speakers and panellists.
Seabed security
The growing focus on security matters in the offshore energy industry comes with rising worries over subsea surveillance and risk of sabotaging offshore energy infrastructure. Increased security concerns started in the Baltic Sea a few years ago, after four gas leaks were found on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022. Investigations by Germany, Sweden and Denmark concluded the leaks were a result of “deliberate sabotage”.
In 2023, Dutch intelligence agencies warned the government about activities being covertly conducted by Russia, saying that there was information on Russia mapping the country’s North Sea infrastructure, including gas pipelines, offshore wind farms, and internet cables.
At the end of that year, a research centre for submarine infrastructure security, Seabed Security Experimentation Center (SeaSEC), opened in The Hague.
On 9 April 2024, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, the UK and Denmark signed a joint declaration to work together to protect infrastructure in the North Sea and, only a day later, eight Baltic Sea countries – Lithuania, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Poland and Sweden – signed a joint declaration to protect offshore and subsea infrastructure against activities that may put the energy assets and supply into jeopardy.
The six countries that came together to protect their North Sea assets later established the NorthSeal security platform to monitor suspicious maritime activity, enable fast information exchange, and coordinate joint responses. The platform was put into operation on 15 January 2025.
Cybersecurity
In the offshore energy sector, national security matters related to assets above the sea surface are coming into the forefront, as well.
At the end of 2023, energy ministers of 26 EU Member States signed off on the EU Wind Power Package that, besides the new EU offshore renewable energy target and plans to streamline permitting and strengthen the supply chain, outlines a path for implementing cybersecurity measures and surveilling offshore infrastructure.
In the UK, concerns were raised last year as a Chinese wind turbine original equipment manufacturer (OEM) plans to build a factory in Scotland and its wind turbines were selected as preferred technology for two North Sea projects.
This June, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration warned the UK government about national security risks that could arise if Mingyang Smart Energy is allowed to build its plant in Scotland and supply its technology to North Sea wind farms.
Following the news on the US warning, Chinese media outlet Global Times cited a senior fellow at the Centre for China and Globalisation, He Weiwen, as saying this was “protectionism under national security guise”.
Mingyang Smart Energy entered the European offshore wind market at the beginning of 2021 by supplying wind turbines for Italy’s first offshore wind farm. Since then, the company has been selected as the preferred supplier for another project in Italy by the same developer, as well as for an offshore wind farm in Germany. In the UK, Mingyang’s technology is said to be under consideration for the Green Volt floating wind farm in Scotland.
The plan for building a factory in Scotland follows a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that the wind turbine OEM signed with the UK Department for International Trade (DIT) in December 2021, under which the DIT and Mingyang agreed to cooperate on bringing its proposed investment in a blade manufacturing factory, a service centre and potentially a turbine assembly factory in the UK to realisation.
Cybersecurity efforts in the sector do not stop at wind turbines and other energy production infrastructure. Earlier this year, North Star’s two new commissioning service operation vessels (CSOVs) secured Lloyd’s Register’s (LR) Cyber Resilience classification. According to Lloyd’s Register, this makes the UK-based offshore wind vessel operator the first organisation in the world to have ships achieve this classification.
Join Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference (OEEC) on 25 and 26 November 2025 in Amsterdam to explore offshore energy security topics in depth and meet the industry bringing forward solutions to safeguard offshore energy assets in Europe and beyond.
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