300 jobs in prospect on oil rig contract
Jun 6 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal
WORK starts today on a huge project which is expected to bring up to 300 jobs to an offshore oil and gas engineering yard.
Hartlepool MP Iain Wright and One NorthEast chairman Margaret Fay are attending the first cutting of the plate metal which marks the start of Heerma Hartlepool’s work on a new sweetening deck and bridge for Nexen Buzzard oilfield, 35 miles off North East Scotland.
The work, expected to take two years, is the Dutch-owned company’s second major contract for Nexen. Two years ago, it fabricated a deck for the oilfield.
Heerma Hartlepool director Frank Moran said: “There is always an official first cutting of the plate. It’s a symbolic thing to mark the start of the work.”
Mr Moran said a few extra staff had already been added to the 120 employed at the yard, but the big recruitment drive was now starting to fulfil the contract.
“We are building up slowly as the work starts. It will build up gradually from now on until September,” he said. “It is a big project and it is really important to us. It means a lot to the yard and the local area.”
The yard is bidding for new projects and keen to diversify from oil and gas fabrication. It expects to hear shortly whether it has succeeded in its first efforts to secure contracts to work on wind farms.
Mr Moran said: “There are a lot of potential wind farm developments coming through and we are pretty confident.
“It is a new area of work, but it is exactly the same type of work we are doing for the oil and gas industry, typically platforms with transformer equipment.”
