EDF’s works council has appealed the Centre Manche 2 award to TotalEnergies/RWE. Legal friction rarely cancels projects, but it does re-time them — and that matters for vessels.

For France, a pause would likely push FID, procurement, and offshore readiness by several quarters. Expect installation windows to slide, moving demand for WTIVs, cable layers, trenchers, and AHTS/guard tonnage into later seasons. Contractors will pad weather allowances, so later start dates don’t mean shorter campaigns. The knock-on: owners re-allocate to UK/German campaigns, while French-readied tonnage idles or pivots to O&M. Weather and port slots (Cherbourg/Le Havre) become the next bottleneck, not contract signatures.

Charterers: treat 2026–2028 as a sliding puzzle. Hold multi-region options, specify DP2 capability early for construction support and W2W SOV access, and design CTV rosters with 10–15% slack for metocean drift. Cable scopes are the tightest—secure burial spreads and HDD support first, then backfill with trenchers. Hybrid and Tier III-ready tonnage is now a tie-breaker as developers chase CO2 and NOx reductions.

Owners: if you’re France-heavy, bring forward dry-docks and upgrades while the curve softens; the rebound will be steeper if multiple FR awards unstick at once. We still see scarcity in DP2 W2W SOVs and high-spec CTVs during Q2–Q4 peaks, so smart repositioning beats holding out for rate highs. Data transparency is a new edge: publish verified fuel curves and emissions per task-hour; it’s winning tenders.

Appeals don’t erase demand—they shuffle it; the agile will capture it.

If you’d like to discuss your offshore projects, reach us anytime at sales@seavium.com.