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own seismic vessels, but rents them as needed, said at the time.

Shortly after the formation of NES, TGS announced its entry into the offshore wind arena, buying 4C Offshore, a market intelligence and consultancy ? rm providing research and insights to the offshore wind industry. At the time of the acquisition, 4C Offshore, based in Lowestoft, UK, employed 29 people and provided data on more than 2,000 offshore wind projects, and had recurring revenue streams from a di- versi? ed base of almost 350 clients, serving 2,200 users.

In 2020, subscription payments for 4C Offshore’s data services accounted for almost 80% of revenues, TGS said, without sharing info on the level of 4C Offshore’s revenues.

TGS then, in the same month, signed an agreement with the Norwegian low-carbon tech company Horisont Energi to jointly work on the identi? cation and classi? cation of

CO2 storage reservoirs and develop new Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies.

A few days later, TGS announced a collaboration with oil? eld services giant Halliburton to bring advanced seismic imaging to ? ber optic sensing to help oil ? rms boost output rates, but also explore carbon storage options, such as carbon storage monitoring, in another proof that the whole oil in- dustry has taken note of the blowing energy transition winds.

Talking about winds, TGS in August announced its in- volvement in the growing U.S. offshore wind market, ex- panding its coverage of numerical weather prediction (NWP) model data for offshore wind off the East Coast U.S., extend- ing from Massachusetts to North Carolina to create a higher resolution dataset than publicly available with coverage over the key offshore wind industry focus areas on the U.S. coast.

Seabed Minerals

Another Norwegian seismic company, SeaBird Explo- ration, has in the past year announced forays into deepsea mining and offshore wind. It launched Green Minerals, a company focused on deep-sea mining of marine minerals and Rare Earth Elements (REE) “key to the green shift,” and “eliminating the social costs in onshore mining while reducing the environmental footprint.”

The company said that medium-term, Green Minerals’ plan is to win licenses to survey, explore, and produce Ma- rine Minerals on the Norwegian Shelf, “thereby “capitaliz- ing on $79 billion worth of resource potential.

Norway could license companies for deep-sea mining as early as 2023, potentially becoming one of the ? rst countries to harvest seabed metals for electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, and solar farms, according to a Reuters article, published in January.

In November 2020, the American Bureau of Shipping’s Vice

President of Global Offshore Markets Matt Tremblay said the world demand for metals required for new forms of transporta- tion and electrical storage is increasing. “Metals such as cop-

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