A sea change for oil and gas workers
As the global energy transition unfolds, oil and gas workers are discovering their skills and expertise are in high demand for the future.
On March 5, 2024
Carefully examining a survey of the vast seabed under the wild waters of the North Sea, Calum Shand is relishing his new job. After nearly 20 years working on oil and gas projects, he is now in a team designing giant wind turbines to float some 80 kilometres off the north-east coast of Scotland.
Weighing up to 3,000 tonnes and soaring to around 250 metres, each turbine would have to cope with the possibility of being hit by a freak 22-metre wave. But before a final decision is made to go ahead with the project, various hurdles must be overcome, including finding suitable areas of the seabed to lay cables and anchor the floating turbines.
“The hope with these surveys is to find nothing of archaeological or environmental interest or concern that could impede our footprint,” says Calum. “But in 2022, we found a 100-metre-long shipwreck which we believe was a merchant navy vessel torpedoed during the First World War.”
The often-stormy North Sea offers some of the best wind speeds in the world for wind farm development. Aberdeen, in north-east Scotland and the home of the North Sea oil industry, is also fast becoming a global centre for the development of skills and opportunities for oil and gas workers eyeing new careers designed to support the energy transition.
Similar career switches by oil and gas workers are taking place in other parts of the world. Some 36 million people work in the low-carbon energy sector globally, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Based on today’s policies, the IEA predicts that 8 million clean energy jobs will be added worldwide by 2030, with fossil fuel jobs declining by 2.5 million to just below 30 million.
As a senior surveyor for the MarramWind project, a joint venture between Shell and ScottishPower, Calum uses many of the same skills he developed on oil and gas projects.
“The biggest difference in my new role is the size of the area we’re surveying,” says Calum. “For example, our current wind farm project has an area 56 times bigger than a typical oil and gas rig site survey.”
Calum’s colleague Denise Neill also joined the project in 2022 after three decades working for Shell on some of the biggest oil and gas developments around the world.
She started to consider changing jobs in 2016 when her daughter asked for her help with a physics project about low-carbon energy. “I did a lot of research into renewable power and my fascination took hold,” she says.
Denise’s personal transition to renewables reflects the second major change to the north-east of Scotland in her lifetime. She grew up on a farm outside Aberdeen, at a time when the development of North Sea oil resources in the 1960s and 1970s was transforming the local economy. Oil and gas swiftly replaced farming and fishing as the main source of revenue in the region.
“I was about six or seven when the decision was taken to expand Aberdeen Airport to cope with the increase in demand for flights,” says Denise. “We had a quarry on our farm and my dad made some extra money by selling some of the rock in the quarry to use in the construction of the airport.
“I witnessed how Aberdeen swiftly transitioned from farming and fishing to oil and gas, so another transition didn’t seem like a big leap for me.”
Transforming skills for the future
Around 60% of jobs in the energy transition will require some post-school training, according to the IEA. Shell has an ambition to help 15,000 people across the Â鶹´«Ă˝ get jobs with a focus on the energy transition by 2035. This includes funding for training at energy transition skills hubs around the country.
One of these skills hubs is being built on the site of a disused dairy distribution centre in Aberdeen. Applications are expected to open this year with the courses starting in 2025. The centre will teach students how to work with low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture and storage, wind turbines and heat pumps. Other skills hubs are scheduled to open in 2024 – including one in Fife, Scotland and one in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
Andy Rodden, programme director for the Aberdeen hub, says that those moving into jobs in the low-carbon energy sector will need the same core skills used in traditional sectors.
“Someone who is planning to be a welder on a floating wind farm will be taught how to work at height in choppy seas and will be given helicopter training, because that’s the only way to get out there,” Andy says. “But the core skill of welding bits of metal together doesn’t actually change – you’re just doing it in a different environment.”
In the Netherlands, Fengli Liu is relishing her own personal skills transition. In 2020, the electrical engineer moved from her role at Shell Chemicals Park Moerdijk, where she was responsible for the plant’s maintenance and inspections, to managing onshore renewable power assets. These include a solar farm which helps to power operations at Shell Moerdijk, Fengli’s previous workplace.
Her responsibilities in her new role go beyond those traditionally associated with an engineer. Fengli is currently making sure that the contractor who mows the lawn around the solar panels avoids the partridges, geese and skylarks nesting in the grass.
“Lots of my skills are transferable, but in my old job I didn’t have to worry about nesting birds,” she says. “Listening to the frogs and birds, and occasionally seeing deer, makes me feel blessed.”
In the USA, Danielle Jensen and her husband David Hasselbeck both moved into offshore wind projects after working as engineers on oil and gas projects for Shell.
“Moving from New Orleans to Boston took a bit of getting used to, particularly the cold winters,” Danielle says. “But I’m super happy we’ve made the switch.
“I’ve been using lots of my old skills in the new job. People don’t always realise how transferable their skills are.”
