Dispatches · News

News from
the North Sea

Progress reports, precedents, and perspectives from the project to rebuild Doggerland, collected here as the vision moves from map to water.

The trailing suction hopper dredger Al-Idrisi under way in open water, suction pipes stowed along her yellow-craned hull

7 September 2026Industry News

Georgia Settles Who Owns the Harbour

Jan De Nul has two jumbo dredgers cutting the channels for Georgia's first deep-sea port, ten years after it was announced. Anaklia was never held up by engineering, but by the question of who owns the harbour. Nieuw Haven will meet that question too.

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Aerial view of Maraen Port of Nigg: a barge loaded with yellow offshore wind transition pieces under tow, more stacked on the quay, a jack-up vessel and fabrication sheds behind

25 August 2026Industry News

A Highland Port Takes On 180 Jobs for the Dogger Bank

Up to 180 skilled jobs are being created at a Highland port to pre-assemble turbines for the Dogger Bank Wind Farm. The bank has been an employer for years; the work is just landing 500 km from the bank itself, and only until the last turbine goes up.

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A hand working a brush across an encrusted lead ingot, the stamped maker's mark showing through the marine growth

22 August 2026Heritage

Three Ingots in the Hornsea Field

A bomb survey for Ørsted's Hornsea 3 wind farm found an unrecorded 17th-century wreck 120 km off Norfolk, carrying English lead for the Netherlands. Offshore construction is now this sea's most productive archaeology, and it is next door to us.

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A semi-submersible drilling rig under tow through the narrow entrance of the Cromarty Firth, tugs alongside, with the cliffs of the Sutors behind

17 August 2026Perspective

Second Lives for the Rigs of the Cromarty Firth

A Highland firth has become the waiting room of the North Sea oil industry: drilling rigs parked between jobs, or parked forever. The steel is superb marine habitat and ready-made offshore accommodation, and Nieuw Doggerland has a use for both.

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Black-and-white photograph from 1932 of floating cranes and clay barges closing De Vlieter, the final gap in the Afsluitdijk, with crowds watching from the decks

15 August 2026Perspective

The Frontier Next Door

Mars gets called the next frontier. Meanwhile the capital, the fleets, the treaties and the first artificial island have all arrived in the shallow sea between Britain and the Netherlands. What makes a frontier real, and why the North Sea qualifies.

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Aerial view of DEME's offshore installation vessel Orion in a calm sea, five rust-brown monopile foundations stacked on deck beneath the towering crane

14 August 2026Industry News

The Builders Are Booked

Vattenfall and CIP have handed DEME up to €300 million to plant 69 monopile foundations at Zeevonk, for offshore work that starts in 2028. The fleet Nieuw Doggerland needs exists, and it is winning work years ahead; the constraint is not capability but the queue.

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