Norwegian-headquartered oil & gas industry geoscience outfit TGS has launched a new business unit for the energy transition markets.
TGS New Energy Solutions (NES) aims to provide “data and insights” for sectors including offshore wind, solar and geothermal energy, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and deep sea mining.
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“Over the past few years, we have seen an increasing interest for our data and insights from other industries besides the oil & gas industry,” stated TGS CEO Kristian Johansen. “By establishing the NES business unit, we are preparing our non-oil & gas offering for further growth.”
“Our aim is to be the leading provider of data and insights that help de-risk investments and reduce the time-to-market. We have been helping our oil & gas customers to de-risk investment decisions for 40 years,” said Johansen.
For the offshore wind sector, TGS promised “a diverse range of applications across the project evaluation and development process ... including resource assessment, remote sensing, and wind project information products”, while for CCS it aims to use its vast seismic and well data library and subsurface intelligence software “to de-risk investments and maintain safety”.
The announcement came as TGS released its fourth quarter results, with net revenues amounting to $120m, a drop of 48% from the same period last year.
“The results continue to be affected by the Covid-19 situation and the steep reduction in oil companies’ capital spending,” said Johansen.
“It is evident that the market for exploring new oil & gas resources is in a deep cyclical trough. However, the lack of investments may cause a strong cyclical recovery when we can put Covid behind us and demand for oil and gas comes back to normalised levels.”
Oilfield services companies are facing “existential changes” to survive the energy transition as deal values came crashing down last year, according to a recent report from Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy, which pointed to the total value of contracts awarded to the oil & gas supply chain slumped to a 16-year low of $446bn in 2020, down 30% on 2019.
