4 minute read
One-to-one
Having survived the downturn and witnessed many changes within the industry, Aquaterra has gone from strength to strength. We talk to one of its founding members and Managing Director, James Larnder.
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What do you see as the company’s top priorities in 2020 and beyond?
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This year we are looking to grow geographically as well as expand our regional offices. We are also revamping our head office in Norwich with a modern approach to our working environment. We are also expanding our warehouse facility in Great Yarmouth to house new equipment and are planning to increase our resources in our Aberdeen, Norway and Australia offices. Geographical expansion is going to be a big area of focus for us, but our customer focus as always, is very important to us. We pride ourselves in our comprehensive offering we give to our customers and have a good understanding of what their drivers are and tailor our offering to meet their needs.
That is one of the key factors to our success with a lot of different clients and has enabled us to move into different locations globally, because we listen to what the gaps in the market are and look to see where we can help to fill those gaps. We also care about our people; I often talk about our intelligent engineering approach and how we can deliver that through the right training of our people internally and externally, to create a leadership team of the future. We have won awards based on that. For example, we won last year’s Offshore Achievement Award for our outstanding skills development. Above all, as always, we are looking to hit our financial targets. But if we achieve all of our priorities, we will smash our financial target.
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What would you say is your strongest product?
We have a couple of flagship products, one of which is our Sea Swift conductor supported platform which is supplied to shallow water environments in key marginal fields. It is a lowcost quick delivery solution to field development.
Another product is our riser system offering focused around subsea high-pressure drilling. This enables drilling, re-entering or abandonment of subsea wells from a jack-up rig. Our success has been driven by innovation and expansion of our product line; this year we have a couple of major subsea riser projects we will be delivering which will be a higher capacity version of our current equipment. This will take us into brand new areas of the market. That is super exciting for us and will be one of our biggest ever launches.
Aquaterra recently won a contract from Chevron, how did that come about?
Chevron is a company we have been involved with for many years. They were actively seeking new ways of accessing assets in offshore Angola, bearing in mind they have been in the country for 40 years, so have many assets and more they want to exploit.
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They like the way we are using our engineering expertise to challenge the traditional way they have always done things, along with many others in the industry. Our approach to platform design supports the growing importance of flexible platform fabrication that can not only help local content rules but also reduce environmental impact via innovative installation options available.
It’s an excellent project for us to be involved in. Chevron is a blue-chip client and it further cements our place as a conductor supported platform provider of choice.
Your company has also partnered with Oceaneering on a decommissioning project, tell us a bit more about what that entails.
Decommissioning is an area that we have worked on before, supplying our products and services which happen to be used in the decommissioning of wells as opposed to drilling. So, we do have a track record. We have collaborated with Oceaneering to tackle the decommissioning market head on. They will bring an expansive product portfolio and we will complement that by drawing on our engineering and project management expertise combined with our own equipment. It’s very much a collaboration because Oceaneering want a base in the North Sea.
Left: Leigh Martin, Senior Manager, Oceaneering. Right: James Larnder, Managing Director, Aquaterra Energy
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Sign up for the EICOnline newsletter Visit www.the-eic.com/Forms/NewsletterSignup @TheEICEnergy We have a great facility in Great Yarmouth as well as office space for them to mobilise and run projects from the southern North Sea area. It’s very much a win-win scenario. It’s quite an exciting time for us. We have set our strategy and are backed by excellent staff and a board who are driving our initiatives forward.
How do you see the energy transition impacting decommissioning within the industry?
The whole energy transition is big in the headlines right now. Obviously, the aim of the North Sea is to be net zero by 2035. What that will do is give authorities the drive and power to push for more decommissioning. There are many assets out there. Two or three hundred platforms need to be removed from the North Sea in addition to approximately 1,000 wells that need to be taken out. The transition will look to accelerate the UK’s decommissioning plan. I think people will need to decide how they will do so efficiently and whether they can re-use any of those assets. Carbon capture is obviously a prime candidate for that, I think it’s more challenging than originally people thought but can be done.
Any EIC members who wish to be profiled in this section please contact Lucy Chakaodza, EIC Editor, Media and Communications Manager lucy.chakaodza@the-eic.com
