Page 45: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2022)

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“There’s going to be more infrastructure going into the sea in the next decade from offshore wind than went in throughout the whole lifetime of oil and gas... it’s going to be off the scale of the number of moorings.

We’re at the beginning of what will be a mega cycle of investment.”

Watch the interview on – Carl Trowell, CEO,

Acteon Group infrastructure projects. But the heritage of the company 2014. I think we will see a resurgence in some of the green came from the oil and gas side and it still remains a big leg, feld new developments, but I think in general that will one of the key legs for us on the stool. But as you say, the still be biased a bit more onshore than it is offshore. And in downturn from 2014 onwards was quite drastic. (Person- the offshore arena, I think that we will still bias our services ally) I’ve been through maybe three or four big downturns towards that existing infrastructure services. in my career and this one felt very different from most, if The other thing is part of our customer base started to for no other reason the duration. seriously get focused on the energy transition. As we’ve

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

tomer base a real entrenchment and a focus on cash fow, It’s going to be very interesting now to see how much the cash fow generation, return back to shareholders rather focus on energy security, and the need for oil and gas in the than pumping money back into lots of new projects. As a interim, how much that really drives a wave of investment. consequence, we saw a lot of our customers focus on invest- We’re seeing it, but is it sustainable? ment in existing infrastructure, existing bases and existing projects. Accordingly, we cut our business to match that.

That leads perfectly to the next question.

I think Acteon now, versus where it was in 2014, is much

On one hand you’re leaning on the tradi- more focused on oil and gas services that are related to the tional oil and gas projects and revenues, installed base. So helping with existing optimization with while you’re also investing in the future, late life extensions, with intervening on infrastructure to the renewable markets that are still ma- turing. How do you balance the two?

add additional capacity or extra wells. So you’re getting more from the install base all the way through to decommission- The challenge is a bit less consequential for us because ing. And so our business in the oil and gas is much more a lot of what Acteon does is within servicing in-sea infra- focused now late life and decommissioning than it was in structure, somewhat agnostic as to whether that’s oil and

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 45