Oil services firm Aker Solutions is injecting £420,000 into its newly acquired environmental business on Orkney.
Opus, which specialises in oil/water/gas separation and treatment technologies for the offshore oil industry, expects to hire four new members of staff over the next two years in Stromness.
The company is meeting growing demand as oil companies seek help to comply with ever-tightening regulations governing the discharging of water produced during the extraction of oil.
Glen McLellan, director of strategic operations at Opus, said: “With the new legislation, no longer do oil companies just need to monitor the oil in water they discharge; they now also look at the overall toxicity of that effluent. Therefore, it gets tested for toxicity, then is subjected to environmental modelling to understand, predict and ensure that there is no risk of potential impact on the environment.”
Opus, which has its headquarters in Guildford, Surrey, was one of the leading laboratories for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) trials in 2010 involved in developing the new approach introduced in January.
The firm has won contracts in Europe, Australia, US, Canada, Brazil, Norway, the Middle East and the Far East, as well as in the North Sea.