Offshore contractors’ low-carbon strategy

The push toward a lower-carbon economy is decades in the making. It has seen numerous ups and downs. The last strong push before this round of resurging low-carbon projects was in the early 2010s, when we saw the participation of mostly the European contractors for green projects in the region.

This round of efforts toward a lower-carbon economy is global. Europe was leading in the number of green projects and still does in terms of technology. Asia, especially mainland China, has put in place ambitious low-carbon targets and is currently the world leader in additional offshore wind capacity.

In doing their part contributing toward a lower-carbon future, offshore oil and gas contractors also stand to gain in terms of new markets to supplement lower oil and gas work as well as accumulating reputational credits as their buyers are increasingly being pressured either by the market or governments to place more emphasis on the environmental footprint of their contractors and supply chains. It is no longer just one's own carbon footprint that is the focus.

As a result, the future of oil and gas contracting will be geared increasingly toward the direction of a lower carbon footprint. In addition, traditional oil and gas contractors seeing the opportunities in the low-carbon markets will devote more resources to pursuing those opportunities. There will be impacts on the availability of capacity and capability to execute oil and gas projects.

In this one-off special report, we seek to explore and hopefully address these topics and concerns below, with a focus on offshore engineering, construction, installation, and maintenance markets.

• Efforts and strategy to enter targeted low-carbon markets and new product development.
• Efforts to reduce one's operational carbon footprint.
• Efforts to reduce clients' carbon footprint.
• Transferability of existing resources between oil and gas and target low-carbon markets.
• Competitiveness against existing contractors in target low-carbon market and success thus far.
• Impact of entry into low-carbon market on the capacity available to oil and gas projects.

The infographic below highlights the findings from this report.

Clients can access the full report by logging into Connect.

Learn more about our Upstream Costs & Technology Research. For more information, contact James Blanchard.

Posted 14 July 2021 by Ding Li Ang, Director, Cost & Technology, S&P Global Commodity Insights and

Frank Larsen, Research and Analysis Director, Upstream Cost & Technology (C&T), S&P Global Commodity Insights and

Pritesh Patel, Executive Director – Upstream Energy, S&P Global

This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.