Page 98 - Sjæklen2002

Summary
In 2000/2001 the Fisheries and Maritime Museum/CMRS
carried out a research project on the knock-on effect of off-
shore activities in the North Sea on the city of Esbjerg and
Ribe County. No statistical record of such matters is kept in
Denmark, and the project therefore started with concrete
lists of suppliers provided by operators in the Danish North
Sea. The results of the project were officially reported in
January 2002. The publication Sjæk’len 2001 contains a
review of the project’s historical aspects, while this article
concentrates on the status of the offshore sector in south-
west Jutland around the turn of the millennium.
The three main operators in the Danish North Sea were
then Amerada Hess, Mærsk Olie og Gas, and Statoil, which
together held 90% of the market. Taking the lower limit of
an annual turnover of DKK 50,000 per supplier, these three
operators had a total of over 1,000 suppliers in Denmark
and abroad. Geographically, 58% of the supplying compa-
nies were in Denmark and 42% were abroad, primarily in
the UK and Norway. Within Denmark, over 40% of compa-
nies were concentrated about Copenhagen, while 31% of
the offshore-related companies were in Ribe County. In
terms of turnover the picture was different: a bare 60% of
investments went to foreign suppliers, while 34% went to
companies in Ribe County, and only about 6% went to sup-
pliers in the rest of Denmark. Ribe County is thus clearly
the centre of gravity of the Danish offshore sector.
The project found a total of 215 companies in Ribe
County supplying the three main operators in the Danish
North Sea. Each of these companies was contacted with
questions on the company’s history, development, speciali-
sation and market as well as number of employees and total
turnover in relation to the offshore sector, with the fol-
lowing results:
The 215 companies employed a total of over 8,000
employees, almost 3,000 of whom occupied full-time posi-
tions related to the offshore sector. To this must be added
the numbers of employees of operators and subcontractors.
While the former can be tallied directly, the full-time posi-
tions among subcontractors had to be calculated via a for-
mula based on concrete examples. The final result was over
3,500 full-time positions. Direct offshore-related turnover
in Ribe County was similarly computed at over DKK 4.6
billion from operator through primary supplier to subcon-
tractor. These computations are minimum figures as for
various methodological reasons, they did not take account
of the private consumption of people employed in the off-
shore sector and similar knock-on effects on other sectors
of this sector’s presence in the region. On the basis of ordi-
nary multiplier models, turnover will therefore be even
greater. But the calculated turnover is significant enough in
itself. By comparison, the total annual tourismrelated turn-
over in Ribe County was computed by the Danish Tourist
Council at approximately DKK 2.3 billion.
In brief, most of the offshore-related turnover and
employment in Ribe County at the turn of the millennium
was with companies which
• were located in the City of Esbjerg
• provided technical products and/or services to the
offshore sector
• had over 100 employees in the company’s
offshore division
• were branch offices of a group
• commenced offshore deliveries in the period 1980-84
• were established in the period 1980-84
• also supplied offshore products and services to
foreign countries
• also supplied areas other than the offshore sector
Over 1/3 of companies were branches of a bigger group,
almost 90% of which had head offices outside the region.
Apart from this, 43% of the companies now already supply
offshore products and services to the international offshore
market. The hydrocarbons in the Danish North Sea are – like
those in all other places – a limited resource, and the ques-
tion is how long the Danish offshore bonanza can continue.
The Danish Energy Authority’s 20-year prognoses and
resource prognoses are based on production ceasing in
2005 and 2010 respectively, after which it is judged that cir-
ca 2020, production will fall to a level corresponding to that
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