Forecaster extends its reach to far oceans

HMNZS Wellington in February battled through 14m swells in the Southern Ocean, which along with the North Atlantic can produce the most extreme seas. Photo / Greg Bowker

MetService buys stake in organisation with aim to help shippers and oil rigs avoid worst of storms

MetService is pushing further into global markets with a business aimed at more accurate forecasting for the shipping and oil and gas industries around the world.

The state-owned enterprise's purchase of a stake in specialist ocean forecasting, MetOcean Solutions, has allowed it to boost its global weather, wave and hazard forecasts.

MetService subsidiary MetraWeather has just won a contract in Papua New Guinea to provide services for a liquefied natural gas operation.

MetService says the partnership with Taranaki-based MetOcean boosts the export potential of MetraWeather, already supplying media and energy industries. Staff in MetraWeather and MetOcean Solutions have more than 20 PhDs in oceanography and meteorology.

The stakes are high - during recent exploratory drilling off the New Zealand coast Texan company Anadarko was spending $100 million a day and with billions of dollars invested in offshore installations around the world, the oil and gas industry is a natural customer. Shipping companies need to know where and when potentially destructive storms will strike to re-route their vessels.

Oceanographer Peter McComb, managing director of MetOcean Solutions, said the company used science to make sense of chaos.

"Weather is a chaotic process. Instead of trying to ignore that, [it] is embracing the chaos and trying to utilise that and come up with a better way of forecasting."

Buoys, wind sensors and satellite information were combined with computer modelling to provide forecasts out to seven days.

"Ocean weather systems create very big waves in many parts of the world but it's not just that - clients are looking at very specific weather systems that affect different operations," McComb said.

Some of the most dangerous conditions occurred when waves came from multiple directions.

"You can have wave heights that are okay but end up with a confused sea state," he said.

The Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic produced the most extreme seas but there were also potentially dangerous conditions on the conti-nental shelves.

Peter Fisher, MetService business development manager, said the organisation last year bought a 49 per cent stake in MetOcean and it would be a strategically important part of MetService's revenue ($42 million last year).

"It's a new market sector for us. They're really very strong on the oceanography side. We've purchased that shareholding and now we can combine [it] with terrestrial weather [forecasting]."

The deal in Papua New Guinea will help increase safety and operational efficiency at the LNG plant's marine terminal where ships are loaded.

"It can take 24 hours to load each vessel. Safe berthing, loading and departure are major considerations of LNG marine operations," Fisher said.

"The weather forecasting products will provide accurate real-time and forecast information to help the project plan its operations."

A MetraWeather meteorologist interprets weather data feeds and delivers daily briefings including wind, wave, and weather forecasts, as well as a weather "threat matrix" forecasting the likelihood of heavy rain, gales and lightning.