The Mayor shooting from his hip

The Mayor of Esbjerg, Johnny Søtrup, would welcome an offensive to train more oil and gas engineers and to see the universities of the town research more in energy.

Esbjerg’s Mayor for the latest 13 years, Johnny Søtrup, who is a member, too, of the board of the municipality-owned Port of Esbjerg, feels that the town is contributing to pave the ground for the offshore industry being one of the heavy weight champions in the commercial structure of the town by investing heavily in new jetties for repair and modification of the drilling rigs without hampering the rest of the shipping and other activities in the harbour.

Esbjerg’s Mayor for the latest 13 years, Johnny Søtrup
Photo: Niels Husted

“The companies in the harbour are good at handling these jobs, and each rig calling accounts for a turn-over of some 50-250 million DKK. That is why the board has discussed, how we shall be able to provide even better facilities for activities like rig repair.”

The municipality is actively ensuring that the authorities may not prevent the harbour from handling the de-commissioning, scuttling and recycling of old platforms expected to take place in a few years. However, he realises, that considering the present high oil prices it might take time before even old, well-used platforms will be abandoned.

The Mayor would like to see that the industry of the town as well as its research and educational institutions take action here and now.

“Aalborg University Esbjerg is the only place in Denmark training oil and gas engineers, but it is a paradox, that too few are trained to meet the demand, and they are mostly foreigners. I think the industry and the university should make a joint drive offering the students a period of practical work in one of our offshore companies. Such a drive could easily be integrated in our marketing of Study Town Esbjerg.”

He still has not given up getting part of the Danish Energy Authority to move to Esbjerg, and he would like the research institutes to increase their focus on the entire energy sector – including wind energy.

“It would be attractive if the universities could direct their research into that direction,” concludes Johnny Søtrup.