Offshore power of all kinds

June 18, 2012
In October 2005, Scottish Enterprise invited me to visit a number of the newer technology companies in Aberdeen.

In October 2005, Scottish Enterprise invited me to visit a number of the newer technology companies in Aberdeen. The focus was on the North Sea's oil and gas industry, but almost all of the companies visited also already had part of their attention on offshore alternative energy opportunities, primarily wind and tidal.

Companies such as Rotech and impROV have continued to pursue roles in both the renewable and hydrocarbons segments, while at the same time expanding to either open offices around the world (Rotech) or be acquired by more established firms such as Fugro (impROV).

Nearly 7 years later the overall process of leveraging oil and gas experience into renewables remains uneven. The British Consulate General in Houston held a panel discussion of UK oil and gas service companies—companies similar in scale to those visited that autumn in Aberdeen—as part of this year's Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.

Mark Guest, Oilcareers.com managing director, noted that traffic on renewable job placement sites was just 5% of that on oil and gas sites. Ian Griffiths, general manager of SMD, which designs and manufactures subsea robotics, underwater propulsion, and control products, observed that though many of the skills needed in offshore oil and gas could be transferred to offshore renewables, the economic disparities between the two industries remained stark enough that this simply wasn't happening much yet.

Whether out of necessity or foresight, however, the UK renewables sector is doing a far better job of talking to younger potential employees than the oil and gas segment, in which only 4% of recent job applicants were new to the industry, according to Guest.

The government

The Scottish Offshore Energy Programme Board (OEPB) is a subgroup of the Energy Advisory Board tasked with driving and coordinating the Scottish public sector's contribution to offshore wind, marine renewables, and offshore grid. It set out a route map in September 2010 to help guide work toward these goals.

Scotland's renewable energy target is to have 80% of electricity consumption supplied by renewables by 2020. The OEPB will issue a report by yearend detailing progress toward this goal, which it sees as generating 28,227 direct jobs. It only stands to reason that at least some of these jobs will be filled by current employees of the oil and gas sector, which already have experience in offshore installation and operation.

Progress

Huub den Rooijen, the UK Crown Estate's Head of Offshore Wind, speaking last month at All Energy in Aberdeen, the UK's largest renewables event, emphasized the importance of an accelerated permitting process and development of an 18-Gw investment opportunity if sufficient commercial interest is to be generated to meet renewable goals. Den Rooijen also, however, emphasized the offshore wind industry's successes, noting that it generated 1.5% of all electricity consumed in the UK in 2011, and that this would rise to 3% once projects already under construction are completed.

Also just last month, Scotland's first tidal power project completed its testing phase in Orkney. The 1-Mw unit was installed last December and has since been undergoing testing while supplying power to Eday Island. ScottishPower Renewables plans to use the technology as part of a 10-Mw tidal turbine array in the Sound of Islay. SPR received planning consent for the project, which it describes as the world's first, from the Scottish government in March 2011.

Perhaps most audacious of all, current offshore grid projects for the UK include laying thousands of miles of high-voltage cable across the Norwegian and North Seas to import geothermal electricity generated by Iceland's volcanos.

And all of this is occurring while applications submitted to drill in the UK North Sea in May were more numerous, 224, than at any point since licensing began in 1964 (OGJ Online, May 23, 2012).

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