London Offers Huge Opportunities to UK’s Booming Subsea Industry
The South East of England is an absolutely vital region in the UK’s booming Subsea industry, making a huge contribution toward the energy sector’s success in winning both national and global subsea projects – according to a leading industry insider.
While Aberdeen has long been Europe’s oil and gas capital, Alistair Birnie, chief executive of Subsea UK, says London’s commuter belt is rapidly establishing itself as a gateway for subsea companies looking to tap into the capital’s financial sector and access key decision makers. He is calling on the City to recognise the huge potential that is on its doorstep.
The subsea industry employs more than 40,000 people in the UK and has a $9 billion share of a $25 billion global market. The UK sector has grown by 25% in each of the last two years and exports 50% of its products and services.
Birnie’s comments come ahead of a major subsea event taking place in London at the end of this month. Subsea Europe, hosted by Subsea UK, the champion of the subsea sector in the UK, will bring together the leading players in the subsea sector and is also an opportunity for movers within the financial sector to hear more about the industry.
Birnie said: “The importance of the South East to the subsea industry should not be under estimated. There is massive potential for growth in this region and that is one of the main reasons we have decided to hold the conference and event in London for the first time. There is still this misconception that the UK’s oil and gas industry is solely based in Aberdeen and while it remains a very important focus for the energy sector, companies, particularly in the subsea industry are increasing finding huge value in having operations in and around the capital.
Among the companies making a name for themselves in the South East are the Xodus Group, headline sponsor of Subsea Europe and OMS who will be exhibiting at the event.
Since opening its London office less than a year ago the Xodus Group, an integrated oil and gas consultancy, has more than doubled its work force and has secured a clutch of international subsea contracts, worth £2.5million in the last six months alone. The firm’s success has been so unprecedented that it has already had to relocate from its start up office near St Paul’s Cathedral to premises on Fleet Street which offer room for further growth. The city base has enabled the company, which has its headquarters in Aberdeen, to capitalise on overseas markets and is proving particularly valuable for its subsea sector.
Richard Heard, Xodus director who spearheaded the move to London said: “London is the natural home of business and the oil and gas industry is no exception.
"We decided to expand into London to take advantage of the benefits of its superb global connectivity and prime networking environment. The sheer range and number of oil and gas companies in London, both upstream and downstream, major and independent, as well as consultants, contractors, vendors, and professional services, make London an unrivalled networking hot-spot.
“Our expansion was designed to give us access to overseas markets and already this is proving valuable. We have recently won work in Indonesia for example, and we are already in talks with a number of London-based clients looking to apply the integrated Xodus approach to large international field development projects.
Having an established Xodus presence in the capital gives us access to emerging and established markets worldwide. Already we are seeing opportunities in key oil and gas regions such as North America, the Middle East and in the rapidly developing areas such as the former Soviet Union and North and West Africa.”
The secret of the company’s stellar rise to success lies in its determination to break the mould of consultancy and take its own unique approach to providing services. While other companies may say they provide fully integrated services, Xodus set out to build integration into their technical delivery from the very beginning. Consistency and equality towards staff is at the core of their approach. This is supported by a management system and various processes which promote integration, in particular, the removal of all profit and loss boundaries between the company's five divisions. In effect, thinking in an integrated way has become habitual within Xodus.
In Hertfordshire, specialist pipe measurement company OMS Ltd (Optical Metrology Services) is another company flying the flag of success for the thriving subsea sector in the South East. Recent winners of the Queen's Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category, the firm has seen turnover soar in the past two years from £425,000 to £1.8m. And with a strong start to the first quarter of their new financial year Dr Tim Clarke chief executive of OMS says the year ahead is looking promising.
He comments: “As pipelines get deeper and deeper in their search for oil we know that our clients will require better products, services and solutions to difficult problems over the next few years. We anticipate being able to meet these new challenges, given the strong team and the level of technical and problem solving capabilities we have”
The company is proud of its position at the cutting edge of the world’s subea sector and is constantly pushing the boundaries and developing new technology. It has recently developed a new system of fit up in the firing line for flow line pipes which optimises both the internal and external fit up of the pipes as well as detecting when pipes will cause problems. The system is currently being used on the Shell BC10 project, and another similar scheme is being used for the Petrobras Cascade Chinook project. It will be among a range of ground-breaking technology on show during Subsea Europe.
Since 2006 the team has expanded from three to 16. One of the most recent joiners is Director of Technology, Dr Richard Gooch. The company has also recruited recently a Global Head of Sales, Max Weiner, to grow the business globally. OMS recently opened a dedicated US office in Houston manned by Marcus Janes formerly of Technip.
