Some of the world’s biggest offshore market areas are the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, East Africa, North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. In addition, an upward trend can be seen in the the offshore investments of Asia and Australia. In the future, however, the dwindling shallow water oil and gas reserves, coupled with the increase in the market price of oil, will cause the production to move to more challenging environments.
Up until now, deep water drilling and drilling in arctic areas have not been economically feasible, but the recent decrease in oil prices and advancement in technologies have made exploiting these areas possible and more cost-effective than before.
Offshore projects are massive and technologically demanding undertakings, which is why oil companies are ready to buy the needed technology and services from whichever provider can offer the best quality and reliability.
The offshore industry is, by nature, one of the most global industries in the world, and even small offshore technology companies often operate on a global scale in order to be able to serve multinational oil companies.
Efficient oil spill response technology needed for preventing environmental damage
As transportation of oil from distant arctic areas increases, so increases the risk of environmental damages. This has created the need to find the most effective ways to prevent accidents and to develop and improve both existing and new measures for oil and chemical spill response in arctic conditions.
Oil spill response involves both public authorities and private organisations, as well as international organisations such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the Arctic Council. The actual response measures are carried out by both national oil spill response authorities and private oil spill response organisations, who play an important role in offering both equipment, personnel and training services.
Finland regularly organizes and takes part in oil recovery exercises in the challenging conditions of the Baltic Sea, and this has brought us valuable experience in – for example – training.
In addition, Finnish authorities have solid experience in international co-operation in oil spill response with other Baltic Rim countries.
In short, Finland’s arctic expertise is very extensive, and this means good business opportunities for Finnish operators in international offshore markets.
Finland’s extensive know-how is worth exporting
Finland’s most important areas of expertise within arctic oil spill response are mechanical oil spill recovery and winter navigation, top quality weather and ice forecast services, and sea traffic control systems.
There is a great global demand for vessels designed for oil spill recovery, sea rescue and ice breaking, and Finnish oil spill response know-how therefore has remarkable business potential.
The global market value of mechanic oil spill response equipment alone has been estimated at around 200 millions of euros.
Oil spill response vessels, barges and other floating constructions also have estimated world market values of hundreds of millions.
When other related products, such as work boats, protective equipment and carriers are taken into account, the market value could well be twice as high. Oil spill response vessels, barges and other floating constructions also have estimated world market values of hundreds of millions.
For Finnish companies, internationalisation is essential since end users in the offshore industry are predominantly abroad. Special effort should be put on networking and on coordinating marketing activities. Creating direct customer contacts is particularly important, because the biggest challenge for companies is to find the purchase decision makers and to get on their procurement lists.
One of the easiest ways to reach these decision makers is participating in oil industry trade fairs, most of whom are increasing their visitor count year after year, proportionate to the growth of the whole industry.
This post has been originally posted in Finnish 11.3.2015. Translation by Annemari Kettunen.