The Oil Engineers
When the Danish oil and gas industry was in its youth companies had to find specialists abroad, but now Esbjerg is the home of several hundred engineers specialized in offshore.
The signal was clear when DUC in February 1979 hosted a major conference for companies interested in joining the oil and gas industry: Get a partner from abroad!
Esbjerg at that time was still young as an offshore town, and many of the companies planning to provide consultancy, projecting and production to the new industry were looking into an entirely new world situated in the North Sea a few hundred kilometres west of Esbjerg.
Photo: Niels Husted
Department Manager in consulting engineers ISC, Jens Møller Jensen, recalls how the dominating actor of the new industry, Maersk Oil, in strong terms advised the interested parties to get hold of some British engineers and tap their know-how from them. And the advice was followed. Maersk Oil in 1991 moving their engineering department to Esbjerg became a catalyst to the growth of the consulting industry. The following years a growing number of consulting engineers specia-lizing in oil and gas increased, and a company like Ramboll is now operating a staff of some 500 persons from its offshore headquarters at Esbjerg.
Major, international jobs
The oil engineers at Esbjerg have long ago learnt to fight for themselves – even to such an extent, that they can now sell their know-how in technologies like exploration of marginal fields to the international market. Actually, the more than hundred offshore-related companies at Esbjerg to an increasing degree present themselves as an integrated group.
“We have established a much closer relationship to other companies,” states Managing Director of Ramboll Oil & Gas, Dan Madsen. “That is a benefit to the entire industry, as we are now able to take on major jobs in the international market.”
He is pleased to see that another Esbjerg-company, Semco Maritime, by taking over Esbjerg Oilfield Services is approaching a staff of 1,500, making it better fit to offering the companies of the town a more inter-na-tional approach to the oil and gas industry.
Too few engineers
The recent chairwoman of the Oil-Gas-Group (OLGAS) of the Engineers Association (IDA), Miriam Lykke, Cowi, is aware of the obvious advantages of having nume-rous engineering disciplines present in a relatively small geographical area.
“In 1991 DUC moved their engineering office to Esbjerg to be closer to the installations in the North Sea. Obviously, it makes work more efficient if you only have to cross the street when calling a meeting instead of having to travel all the way to Copenhagen.”
She still considers the oil and gas industry an interesting area for engineers especially as the installations in the North Sea are getting old, and a larger percentage of the oil in place must be recovered from the underground. All the prophecies of the Danish oil and gas industry soon to die out have, however, meant a disadvantage to the recruitment of new engineers and other specialists. For more than 20 years it has been proclaimed that in 20 years there will be no more oil and gas left in the North Sea.
Seen from the point of view of our society we are talking about so much money that it will pay to carry out more research as well as to continue work in this industry,” states Miriam Lykke.
Like all other companies within the national and international offshore industry the engineering companies have a hard time recruiting new staff for their projects. One of the reasons being that too few engineers have specialized in oil and gas at Denmark’s Technical University (DTU) at Lyngby north of Copenhagen as well as at Aalborg University Esbjerg (AAUE).
“There are lots of jobs in the industry, and I can only recommend young people to consider a career as an offshore engineer,” claims Miriam Lykke, working at the Oil and Gas Department at Cowi and at present being contracted to DONG Energy.
FACTS: IDA Energy is born
On January 18th 2007 the 480-members Oil-Gas-Group organized in Dansk Ingeniørforening (IDA) merged with another professional network, the Fuel and Energy Technical Association (BES). The idea being to provide the new IDA Energy with more professionalism and a wider perspective within the energy industry.
