The fact that Britain’s oil and gas production has been reduced in half since 1999 attracted oil service companies to work with wind energy developers in the North sea, reported Bloomberg.
Companies led by Technip SA (TEC) and Subsea 7 SA (SUBC) are working for the first time in the North Sea’s EUR 14 billion a year market, and Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) offers its expertise to wind developers as well.
The plan is to exploit the similarities between building undersea oil installations and constructing offshore wind farms.
Jayesh Parmar , a London-based consultant at Baringa Partners LLP said : “The synergies available between offshore wind and oil and gas are most apparent in the North Sea.
“It makes sense here to be operating in both areas.”
Richard Cooke , head of renewables business development at Petrofac said: “To a large extent there is commonality between the engineering and management skills required to successfully deliver offshore oil and gas projects and those required to successfully deliver offshore wind projects.”
At least 446,000 will work in industries related to North Sea offshore wind by the end of the decade, according to EWEA’s prediction. As the government mandates to raise the amount of clean energy power, the focus remains on that area, where up to EUR 152 billion euros of investments are needed in the next 8 years to build as much as 35.5 GW of offshore wind, including Britain and Germany.
Britain has about a third of the potential sites for offshore wind farms in Europe off Scotland and in the North Sea, more than any other nation.
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Offshore WIND staff, May 2, 2012; Image: vattenfall