A body set up to make sure UK businesses are ready to secure opportunities from oil and gas decommissioning work has seen membership numbers jump.
Brian Nixon, chief executive of Decom North Sea (DNS), said there was growing awareness in the industry of the need to maximise economic benefit from the £30billion or so workload of decommissioning work facing the North Sea over the next few decades.
The near-40 members of DNS include operators, major contractors, service companies and technology developers.
Individual companies to have joined recently include Marathon Oil, BP, Hess, Wood Group, Rotech Subsea, Peterson SBS and Port Services Group.
Aberdeen-based DNS has also signed reciprocal agreements with regional energy bodies throughout Europe to help it to reach as many potential members as possible in the UK and farther afield.
Mr Nixon, energy director of Scottish Enterprise before joining DNS, said: “Our target is to have 70 members by the end of the year and I am confident we will achieve and even surpass this.
“The latest market projections agree that the first major lump of decommissioning activity in the North Sea is forecast to ramp up quickly within the next year or two.
“While we will be aiming to help the supply chain to develop cost-reduction techniques in the North Sea initially, our role will include progressively supporting companies in future to export skills and technologies around the world.”
DNS’s first major decommissioning industry conference takes place from October 5-7 at Dunblane and will be hosted in partnership with Oil and Gas UK.
The body was established last year as a direct result of industry recommendations to stimulate and support the development of the decommissioning supply chain.
It is benefiting from initial financial support from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and from Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, but aims to become self-sustainable through membership subscriptions and other sources of revenue.
