Aker Solutions has announced plans to open a large engineering office employing 2-3,000 people in Tromsø in three to five years time.
The firm said the new office was part of its overall strategy to increase its footprint in the northern regions of Norway.
This, it said, was driven by an increasing number of field development opportunities offshore northern Norway and in the Barents Sea.
“We believe in the reserves potential on the Norwegian continental shelf and in the Arctic. If the market continues to develop positively and we are successful in our efforts to win work with customers in the region, we believe that we will have a substantial engineering hub in the north, with 2-300 employees in three to five years,” said executive chairman Øyvind Eriksen.
Tromsø is the largest city in northern Norway. Aker said the university in Tromsø was becoming increasingly involved in oil and gas-related research and education programmes.
Elsewhere in northern Norway, Aker is in the process of building up a subsea service base – housing engineers, technical staff and field operators – in Hammerfest to support the Goliat subsea field development. It also recently acquired Narvik-based well technology business X3M Invent.
It said it was considering establishing an engineering office in Sandnessjøen to support the company’s modifications and operations services business.