Acquisitions have dominated the shipping industry of late, namely Havfram of Norway's takeover by Belgian group DEME; and that of Sweden-rooted Northern Offshore Group by Japanese shipping giant NYK.
It is possibly the strangest claim I’ve ever seen made about the UK energy industry, that the rollout of wind and solar power over the last decade has made the electricity supply “more British” as hydrocarbon production/imports continued their long-running decline.
Commercial fishing is a tiny contributor to the UK economy. In 2023, UK vessels landed approximately 719,000 tonnes of sea fish with a value of £1.1 billion.
It was totally predictable. On March 26, Labour got away with it, voting to block a House of Lords attempt to prevent the Starmer Administration buying solar panels where there is “credible evidence” of modern slavery in the supply process, especially China.
A team of scientists at the UK’s number one ranked university have developed a way of making liquid fuels using the power of the sun to pull carbon dioxide from the air and make synthesis gas.
Subsidies are of fundamental importance to global energy and food production.
There exists in the US an organisation named the Ocean Energy Safety Institute (OESI), about which little appears to be known here in the UK; nor do we have anything that can be regarded as its equivalent.
A year ago, Norway became the first country to back deep sea mineral prospecting in its waters, with a government plan to launch an exploration licenses bidding round this year (2025).
The UK's National Grid has reached a milestone in its programme to eliminate sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) from its network with the arrival of the first of two 178 tonne supergrid transformers and Hitachi Econiq SF6-free switchgear, at a new electricity substation being built in the UK capital.
Delving into the world of energy science and technology has long been a fascination of mine. It is an interest that personally reaches right back to 1958 in New Zealand.
2024 ended on a high at Concordia Damen, with the Dutch shipbuilding group reaching the roughly halfway stage in the design, build and delivery of two 550ft (167.5m) roll–on–roll–off wind turbine systems carriers for fellow Dutch company Amasus, with delivery of the first sister expected later this year (2025).
A year from now, under EU Regulation (EU) 2024/573 and in line with the Paris Agreement, the use of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) will be banned in medium voltage equipment rated up to 24kV across the EU-27.
At COP29, which I regard as a failure, 25 countries and the European Union supposedly pledged to commit to no new “unabated” coal power in their next round of national climate plans.
Despite mounting pressures to clean up its act, Big Oil is in reality showing little sign of doing so with genuine commitment and, if anything, is regressing by returning to its core business of finding and producing oil, gas and condensate.
Whilst widely touted as the way to go for heating homes and businesses in temperate and cold regions, the uptake of heat pumps is way behind the ambition, even in Europe and most certainly the lame-duck UK.
While there may be broad agreement on the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas in terms of reducing air pollutants, the impact of LNG in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has clearly become a point of contention.
The CSOV scene is increasingly busy with a newbuild at Damen Shipyards and a German-Norwegian joint-venture are a focal point.
Recently, Joides Resolution (JR), arguably the most famous research drillship of all time, was prematurely retired and is now in the early stages of being stripped of its equipment prior to scrapping.
Decommissioning is a brutal piece of terminology as it basically means removing something from service; rendering it permanently unusable; putting it totally out of reach. No matter how.
Let’s be clear about what “just transition” actually is and why it is the energy revolution now gaining momentum as the core driver of the colossal changes that human society must undergo globally, or else.
Promoting and delivering diversity, equality and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace is an essential aspect of good people management.
Ammonia (NH3) can be decomposed to produce hydrogen gas without releasing CO2. The ease of transport and high hydrogen density makes it valuable for the green energy industry.
Arguably the bellwether of UK North Sea oil and gas production the BP that we know today grew out of Anglo-Iranian with the name British Petroleum Company formalised in 1954.
A robotics-based geophysical survey of the Dogger Bank D offshore wind farm successfully started last month and will be ongoing until the end of the year.
At various times in my more than three decades of scribbling about energy I have witnessed several windfall tax grabs by both Labour and Tory administrations.