GL Noble Denton has established a Global Design Centre for floating structures at its offices in Brevik, Norway. The move comes as part of a significant investment programme that has seen the independent technical advisor re-structure its Norwegian operations in line with growth plans for the region.
GL Noble Denton’s Global Design Centre brings together a team of more than 50 experienced engineers to provide design services for a range of offshore and floating oil and gas structures, including deep water units, floating production and storage units (FPSOs), mobile offshore drilling units (semi & monohull), as well as specialised tanker and OSV vessels. The team will also draw upon its 100-year heritage to support the development of new merchant and passenger ships, and the growing market for wind turbine installation vessels.
Providing operators across the world with access to some of the oil and gas industry’s most valuable expertise in floating asset design, the Centre will offer a range of capabilities from evaluating and developing initial concepts to detailed asset design and drafting. It will play a major role in the GL Noble Denton’s growing network of asset development services, which includes a Global Design Centre for jack ups and jackets in Sharjah, UAE, and established design offices in the UK, the US, China, India and Germany.
GL Noble Denton’s Managing Director for Norway, Tore Lea, said:
“Norway’s oil and gas industry is set to enter a period of considerable growth over the coming years. The country’s latest licensing round is expected to receive a record-breaking response, and recent discoveries of large reserves in the North Sea will continue to make the Norwegian Continental Shelf highly attractive to operators.
“GL Noble Denton’s world-class team of design engineers will help to serve a growing need for offshore assets, both in Norway and across the world. Work has already begun to support a number of major corporations in the development of some the most advanced vessels and structures in the industry.
“Our Global Design Centre complements GL Noble Denton’s ongoing expansion in Norway. Earlier this year, we opened an increasingly successful Dynamic Positioning base in Stavanger, in addition to expanding our oil and gas technical consultancy services from our principal Norwegian office in the country’s principal energy city.”
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Offshore WIND staff, August 28, 2012; Image: gl