Page 16: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2022)

CEO IN FOCUS CARL TROWELL, ACTEON on the stool. But as you say, the downturn from 2014 onwards arena, I think that we will still bias our services towards that was quite drastic. (Personally) I’ve been through maybe three existing infrastructure services. or four big downturns in my career and this one felt very dif- The other thing is part of our customer base started to seri- ferent from most, if for no other reason the duration. ously get focused on the energy transition. As we’ve seen their

What we saw is a couple of things. We saw from our cus- focus change, we’ve been moving with them.

tomer base a real entrenchment and a focus on cash ? ow, cash It’s going to be very interesting now to see how much the ? ow generation, return back to shareholders rather than pump- focus on energy security, and the need for oil and gas in the ing money back into lots of new projects. As a consequence, interim, how much that really drives a wave of investment. we saw a lot of our customers focus on investment in existing We’re seeing it, but is it sustainable? infrastructure, existing bases and existing projects. Accord- ingly, we cut our business to match that. I think Acteon now How do you balance offshore oil and gas work with versus where it was in 2014 is much more focused on oil and emerging markets like offshore wind?

gas services that are related to the installed base. So helping The challenge is a bit less consequential for us because a lot with existing optimization with late life extensions, with in- of what Acteon does is within servicing in-sea infrastructure, tervening on infrastructure to add additional capacity or extra somewhat agnostic as to whether that’s oil and gas infrastruc- wells. So you’re getting more from the install base all the way ture, renewables or other structures. It means for all of our through to decommissioning. And so our business in the oil services, it’s a move or a nudge over in that direction, or it’s a and gas is much more focused now late life and decommis- repurposing or dual-use of some solutions.

sioning than it was in 2014. I can give you an example of that in what we have within

I think we will see a resurgence in some of the green ? eld our moorings and anchors business unit, InterMoor. There, we new developments, but I think in general that will still be bi- developed a SEPLA anchor, a suction embedded plate anchor ased a bit more onshore than it is offshore. And in the offshore which was used in the oil and gas industry in many places all

Image courtesy Acteon 16 November/December 2022

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