Last week saw the arrival of the ironically named ‘Noble Innovator’ to Aberdeen’s (almost-there) South Harbour – formerly known as the Bay of Nigg. The ‘Innovator’ is the 600 ft high monstrosity visible beyond the tombstones of St. Fittich’s Kirk.
It is a striking monstrosity, visible across Aberdeen’s skyline – competing with church spires and well known landmarks.
It’s arrival came “just days after port bosses declared their ambition for the new South Harbour to become a leading location for jack-up maintenance.” – presumably in competition with Dundee and Cromarty. Roddy James, Chief Commercial Officer, Port of Aberdeen, apparently said: “It’s exciting to welcome new types and sizes of vessels to the port, be that from oil and gas, renewables, cargo, or cruise. South Harbour’s tidally unrestricted deepwater berths, extensive laydown space and heavy lift capacity, make Aberdeen an attractive option for larger vessels.”
Personally, with only 2 monohulls and a jack-up in the basin and 2 cranes of the middling type, I was unconvinced at claims of high berth utilisation and heavy lifting capacity. Maybe I just visited on the wrong Wednesday.
But Roddy James ambition to encourage vessels from “oil and gas, renewables, cargo, or cruise” in that order represents a doubling down of the Port and the Energy Transition Zone organisation on oil & gas…don’t get me started on cruise liners.
To the oil & gas mindset, big is always beautiful. High capitalisation. Engineering machismo. But “Innovator”?
Doris Reiter, Senior Vice President, bp North Sea, allegedly said: “The business decisions bp is taking today continue to positively impact the economy of Aberdeen, as they have for nearly 60 years. Our contract with Noble supports the supply chain to seize opportunities on our doorstep and a huge oil rig, sporting legs more than 200 metres in height, has become the largest ever vessel to visit the Port of Aberdeen.”
They do like those long legs!
The rig is in for a 3 month inspection & maintenance programme. The PR implies that bp (formerly Beyond Petroleum but not so much now) will keep Aberdeen cosy in its long-term relationship with fossil fuels. No innovation to be seen here: just a bigger version of a technology and a mind-set that stretches back to the first half of the 20th century.
Press reports reveal the ‘Innovator’ will spend a year plugging played-out wells in the Central North Sea: business as usual therefore since abandonment has always been a key element of the oil majors scope of responsibility. Less ‘visible’ is the Ocean Great White – no irony there then! The Great White is (allegedly) the world’s largest semi-submersible rig and is ‘making its way to the West of Shetland to carry out drilling work’ for bp. New wells, more oil, more CO2, more planetary warming. Sticking, as they say, to the knitting.
In a week which also saw some SNP leadership hopefuls rowing back from the Scottish Government’s legally binding commitment to Net Zero by 2045, these ‘puffs’ suggest it is once again ‘OK’ to big up fossil fuel production for the short term economic well-being of Aberdeen and the engineering companies who support the oil & gas industry. And, if gainfully employed doing so, where’s the incentive to genuinely innovate and realign practices with renewables and alternatives to capital intensive engineering?
The Noble Innovator is neither innovative or noble: and the publicity surrounding its arrival suggests zero commitment in the Aberdeen business and political elites to the necessary changes. They speak of a ‘Just Transition’ but no Transition which enables continuing global warming and the loss of millions or billions of lives can, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as ‘Just’.