Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway -- Northwest Spain is looking to forge engineering links with Norwegian offshore contractors. At a seminar at ONS this week, the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion (Igape) outlined the potential in the regions of Ferrol, Eume, and Ortegal on the north coast.
Ferrol, close to La Coruna, is best know for the Izar Fene shipyard, which delivered the Petrojarl Foinaven and Captain field FPSOs in the 1990s, and Discoverer deepwater drillships for Transocean. Izar eventually folded, unable to compete on cost with Far East yards, but much of the naval engineering and construction personnel in the company remain in the region.
In the port of Vigo on the Portuguese border various shipyards are building offshore construction, ROV survey, and accommodation vessels for Norwegian companies, and there is also a welding innovation center in the region, said Francisco de Bartolome, Izar Fene's former technical manager.
Bartolome, who now works for the College of Naval Architecture in Ferrol, claimed that graduates from Galician technical institutes were strongly in demand among Norwegian contractors. Ferrol is strong in marine, industrial, electrical, and electronic engineers.
There is strong capability locally in fabrication, he added, to provide conceptual design and front-end engineering, basic design, life-cycle cost analysis, mechanical completion, and pre-commissioning/commissioning.
08/28/2008
