A recent survey, by consultants Arthur D Little, revealed that the subsea oil and gas sector is once again one of the fastest growing sectors of the UK economy. However, the need for around 3,000 more skilled workers across the sector in the next couple of years poses some real challenges for the future.
The survey showed that the market had a strong revenue growth of 29% in the last year. International business accounts for just over 50% of the sector's revenues. Exports have risen by 26%, increasing at a similar rate to the market growth. This demonstrates the truly international potential of this sector.
It is anticipated that the international market will grow at a faster rate than the UK subsea market in the future and expanding our global presence is now the most important step to maintaining our market leading position.
The subsea sector in the UK has expanded rapidly with around 800 companies now operating and currently employing some 40,000 people with revenues of around $9 billion.
International business now accounts for more than half of the revenues of UK based subsea companies, the majority of which are based in the north-east of Scotland and the north-east of England.
The findings reveal that the UK remains an attractive market for most players with potential for continued high levels of activity. However, Subsea UK, the body set up to champion the sector and promote it both at home and abroad, believes that the sectors global position is under increasing threat from other countries.
Most of the bigger companies are focusing on developing work streams and key projects in areas such as West Africa, North Africa, Asia Pacific, as well as Australia, Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico.
Key to future growth will be the ability of UK companies to fully capitalise on the international potential. To remain market leaders we must act from this position of strength and the industry must capitalise on global opportunities.
In last months issue of Pathfinder we highlighted the extent of the skills shortage we currently face and introduced our recently launched www.subseaskills.co.uk site.
This site was set up by Subsea UK to directly target potential skills and act as a direct portal for visitors to gain straightforward access to subsea companies’ vacancy pages.
A number of subsea-related UK businesses feature on this site and while there are hundreds of career opportunities listed, it only gives a snapshot of some of the 800 companies in the sector.
We estimated that there are between 30,000 to 40,000 people in the industry in this country, so if the industry is going to continue to grow we will need upwards of 3000 people across the board in the next year or so, and that will continue for some time – project engineers, specialist engineers, on and offshore technicians, marine and construction people.
All of the main engineering disciplines are required in the subsea industry:
- Engineers with mechanical and structural skills make big contributions to the development of production equipment, subsea structures, and pipelines.
- Electrical and electronic engineers are involved with control systems.
- Chemical engineers carry-out process analysis of the systems to ensure the fluids will flow satisfactorily.
- And engineers of all disciplines get involved in the management that's required to bring hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment together to complete a single offshore oilfield development.
The UK's subsea companies are active in the full lifecycle of the industry from research and development through to the operation of producing oil and gas fields. That means engineers can experience a range of jobs and can find a role that suits their skills and aspirations.
Many engineers join the subsea industry directly from further education. Others begin in another field of the oil and gas business and transfer to subsea part-way through their careers. And there are those who begin work in a very different industry before making the switch.