The tragic loss of 11 lives and the environmental damage caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is understandably raising interest in the safety regulations governing offshore drilling in the UK continental shelf (UKCS).
SOME time back, I wrote that oil&gas companies were not actually in the business of providing us with energy and operating in the national interest, but making a profit for their shareholders, and that the provision of energy was just coincidental.
THE horse-trading for a coalition government produced Chris Huhne as the man in charge of the UK's energy policy. Now we await the practical implications of that choice. At one level, this was a pretty obvious bone to throw to the Lib Dems, given their preoccupation with energy and the environment. Perhaps, however, it was a little too obvious - and therefore mistaken.
Just a few days ago, I was talking about North Sea industry leadership to a bunch of Aberdeen Business School students. My argument was simple: the UK's offshore industry represented a rare example of companies, relevant trade organisations, Government and even trade unions working together in a sustained way towards a set of common goals.
Over the past 30 years, Aberdeen has been the epicentre of a spectacular period of industrial development, resulting in the city achieving the number-two position in the world for the supply of engineering and support services to the oil&gas sector.
NEAR-SHORE waves offer much better prospects for wave energy development than previously thought, according to a report published in the New Scientist. Indeed, author Dr Matt Folley, of Queen's University, Belfast, who has calculated how much energy can be extracted from all wave types, has found that near-shore waves offer almost as much exploitable energy as offshore waves.
GERMAN turbine manufacturer Nordex SE has signed a contract to acquire roughly a 40% stake in the project company which is developing the Arcadis Ost 1 windfarm offshore Germany.
TODAY, there are just three wind turbines in the sea off the American coastline, but that is about to change with the US federal government's approval of an array of 130 machines to be located off the eastern seaboard at Cape Cod. After years of battling, Cape Wind at last has the green light for construction to start shortly on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Massachusetts.
WAY up, if not at the top of, the current European offshore windfarm league table is Swedish utility Vattenfall, which has just started work on its third UK project - Ormonde - a hybrid wind-gas project, with the current focus on the wind element.
Let's be honest about this, shall we? Since the last All-Energy, it really has not been the best year for the UK and Scottish renewables sectors, although perhaps, given the state of the economy and the attitude of the banks to small companies, it hasn't been quite as bad as some - including me - had actually expected.
Green Ocean Energy is an SME hopeful. Three or so years ago, it developed a free-floating wave device called Ocean Treader but decided that a faster way to market might be to design and build a cousin, Wave Treader, that would clamp on to the substructure of an offshore wind turbine and exploit energy in a commercial symbiotic relationship.
Amid the bloated claims that are made about what renewable energy will deliver for Scotland, the technology to which least attention is paid is the one that actually delivers most - hydro electricity.
As momentum builds and North Sea wind-turbine growth accelerates so the pressure for effective safety standards builds. In about two years, the number of turbines in the "North Sea" will have passed the 1,000 mark. By that, I mean machines installed not just in UK waters, but offshore The Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and so on.
THE "AGM" of Britain's burgeoning renewables industry, to be staged in Aberdeen this week, promises to be the biggest and best yet. All-Energy 2010, the 10th in the annual series, will be staged on Wednesday, May 19, and Thursday, May 20, at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. In addition, Renewables UK is running a share fair on the Tuesday.
MORE than half of the energy we use in Scotland goes to heat our buildings and homes. At the moment, much of this is provided by fossil fuels - gas in areas served by the gas grid, oil or electricity elsewhere. But the UK and Scottish Governments have important plans to encourage us to heat our buildings using renewable sources.
For just over a decade, the renewables industry has been meeting in Aberdeen to sketch out the future of offshore wind and marine energy at All-Energy, plus Scottish Renewables has, on occasion, staged events, too.
THE race for renewables is now global, with bold targets set by a growing list of countries. Even generally resource-rich Latin America is embracing the revolution, including one of the world's most successful deepwater oil&gas producers - Brazil.
Finding enough money to commercialise clean technology poses a major challenge to all involved. Without it, the technology and business-model innovation needed to enable a global transformation towards a more resource-efficient and low-carbon future is tough.
Aberdeen company Subocean is preparing to set up a satellite office in Germany in a bid to capture lucrative contracts with offshore wind developers on that side of the North Sea.
There is an urgent need for the offshore renewables industry to establish a common set of safety competence standards based on the North Sea oil&gas model, according to the group CEO of the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation (OPITO).
CARRYING out safe and efficient mooring operations has become increasingly challenging as rig anchoring operations are carried out more and more in deeper water and where there is significant existing oil&gas production infrastructure.
THE race for wind-power supremacy in the North Sea has taken a further step with DONG Energy of Denmark submitting a binding tender to the Danish Energy Agency for the concession to build a 400-megawatt offshore windfarm off the Danish island of Anholt, in the Kattegat.
FINNISH engineering consultancy Poyry has joined to growing list of companies with an Aberdeen presence to set up a dedicated team to exploit renewable energy-related opportunities - especially offshore.
THE UK Continental Shelf has nine mobile rigs (four semi-submersibles and five jack-ups) currently active on four exploration and five appraisal wells in the Northern, Central and Southern North Sea.
With most of the companies under our coverage having December year-ends, Q1 was unsurprisingly dominated by full-year results.
