By Ian McConnell
ABERDEEN-based North Star, which describes itself as the largest offshore emergency support vessel operator in the North Sea, has been awarded a raft of new contracts totalling more than £100 million.
The 135-year-old company says it will through the new contracts support new and existing clients in the UK Continental Shelf with its “fast-response emergency fleet, purpose-built to protect personnel working on offshore oil and gas platforms”.
The firm, which employs around 1,400 people across the UK including 140 deck and engineering cadets enrolled in its three-year training programme, said that “with additional year charter options, this marks North Star’s most sizeable emergency response rescue vessel order book in recent years”.
READ MORE: Hotelier Paddy Crerar says ‘xenophobic’ Brexit has created ‘impossible’ situation
North Star, which noted its training programme is in its 26th year, added: “These significant new wins are a combination of new clients and new asset locations, as well as continuations secured with operators the...company has worked with since the 1980s.
Highlighting its position as the “North Sea’s largest emergency response vessel operator”, North Star noted it had 41 ERRVs (emergency response and rescue vessels) in its fleet currently assigned to support 50 offshore oil and gas installations in the region, “delivering reliable, uninterrupted, around-the-clock assistance, 365 days a year”.
North Star is now owned by private equity firm Partners Group.
READ MORE: The cost of Scotland’s rural and remote housing crisis: Ian McConnell
Matthew Gordon, chief executive North Star CEO said: “Winning these significant ERRV contracts worth £100 million demonstrates the industry’s ongoing confidence in our highly effective and reliable fleet which continues to provide a safe place in case of an incident for the thousands of people working out at sea on oil and gas assets every hour of every day, solidly across the year.
“North Star has supported the offshore energy sector for the past 40 years and we have an unrivalled expertise and high quality ERRV fleet. I’m proud to say that we have never left any client’s offshore workforce unsupported, ensuring there is always a vessel on standby to enable any crew changes, help to replenish stores on the installation, or support regular maintenance."
He added: "The North Sea is still a very competitive landscape, and we recognise the need for continual investment in our fleet and services to ensure we deliver value and efficiencies to remain market leading. As part of this, we have looked to optimise our operations with a new maritime fleet management system and begun the process of decarbonising our entire fleet.”
North Star noted it had, last year, entered the UK’s offshore wind market, providing service operation vessels which are used to transport technicians to offshore windfarms and accommodate them for extended periods of time.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here