My company is part of the energy transition. Here's why Rosebank and Jackdaw are crucial – Mike Pettigrew

The offshore renewables industry needs ports, vessels, warehouses, engineers, technicians and experienced people who know how to deliver complex marine engineering projects safely and at scale (Picture: Bryn Colton) | Getty Images

There is no energy transition without an energy supply chain. Behind every headline project sits an intricate choreography of people, machinery and experience: cranes moving at dawn, vessels leaving harbour, warehouses operating around the clock and teams solving problems before they become delays.

This work often goes unseen, but it is the practical foundation on which every credible vision of Britain’s energy future must ultimately rest. That point can sometimes get lost in the debate about Britain’s energy future.

We rightly talk about the technologies we want to build – offshore wind, carbon capture, hydrogen and the wider infrastructure needed for a lower-carbon economy. But none of those projects happen by magic. They need ports, vessels, warehouses, engineers, technicians and experienced people who know how to deliver complex offshore projects safely and at scale.

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A valuable supply chain

That is why projects such as the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields matter far beyond the oil and gas they would produce, if allowed to go ahead. As a logistics and materials management business, ASCO's job is to make complicated energy projects work: moving people and equipment, managing supply bases and warehouses, coordinating vessels and ensuring the right materials are in the right place at the right time.

For Rosebank specifically, we are running project support from our supply base in Peterhead – we have been doing this work in the North Sea for nearly 60 years. Today, our UK footprint stretches down the east coast, with bases and operations in Peterhead, Aberdeen, Teesside and Great Yarmouth. The people working from those locations, and the businesses supporting them, are part of a genuinely UK-wide energy supply chain.

It is a supply chain Britain should value – and one we cannot simply switch off for a few years and expect to switch back on when the next generation of renewable projects is ready.

The energy transition will take time. Oil and gas demand is falling gradually but will remain part of the energy mix for decades to come. Meeting that demand increasingly through imports does not make it disappear. It simply moves the jobs, investment and economic value overseas while leaving the UK more exposed to global markets and disruption beyond its control.

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The Norwegian approach

At the same time, activity in offshore wind, carbon capture and other emerging technologies must grow. But these are not yet being delivered at the scale required to meet the UK’s energy needs, and building them will require substantial investment.

A strong domestic energy sector can help provide both the secure energy we need today and the revenues, capital and industrial base needed to develop the system of tomorrow. The sensible approach – as is done in neighbouring countries such as Norway – is not to treat traditional and new energy as competing worlds, but to recognise the industrial bridge between them.

The same skills, infrastructure and businesses that have served the North Sea for decades are increasingly being deployed across the wider energy economy. ASCO itself is a good example.

We continue to support oil and gas, while also working on major renewable projects, including offshore wind. On Teesside, our operations at Teesworks are supporting a growing cluster of offshore and low-carbon industries. Our strength as a business comes from diversification across the energy sector. But diversification requires something to diversify from.

A world-class supply chain cannot be sustained on warm words about future opportunities. Businesses need a meaningful pipeline of projects today if they are to keep investing in facilities, equipment, apprentices and people. Skilled workers cannot be expected to sit around indefinitely waiting for projects that may arrive several years from now. If the work disappears, the capability goes with it.

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Thousands of jobs

Jackdaw and Rosebank represent precisely the kind of large-scale activity that can help prevent that hollowing-out.

Together, the two projects are expected to support more than 3,500 jobs at peak construction and around 880 high-quality jobs through their producing lives, alongside at least 125 apprenticeships. Almost 200 contracts have already been placed, including with more than 170 UK-registered companies. Those numbers represent engineers, fabricators, port workers, vessel crews, logistics teams and specialist companies in communities across the country.

For businesses like ours, the importance is not simply one contract or one project. The bigger issue is whether the UK retains the scale of industrial activity needed to sustain an ecosystem of companies capable of delivering major energy infrastructure. That matters to the future of renewables too.

Britain has an extraordinary advantage in the North Sea: decades of accumulated expertise in operating in one of the world’s most demanding offshore environments. Other countries would spend years trying to recreate that capability. The danger is that we allow it to erode just as we need it for the next phase of the transition.

Jackdaw and Rosebank can provide part of that certainty. They are not an alternative to renewable energy – they are part of the bridge that helps us get there while continuing to meet the country’s energy needs.

The UK is rightly ambitious about building a lower-carbon energy system. But ambition has to be matched by an industrial strategy grounded in how projects are actually delivered. That means backing a diversified energy sector, recognising that oil and gas will remain part of the mix for years to come, and maintaining the people, businesses and infrastructure that will ultimately build the energy system of the future.

Jackdaw and Rosebank are not about looking backwards. They are about making sure Britain still has the capability to move forward.

Mike Pettigrew is chief executive of logistics and materials management firm ASCO