Aker Solutions to establish engineering hub in London

The oil and gas technology services company, which currently employs more than 3,000 people across the UK, also announced recently that it is looking to grow its Aberdeen operation with 500 jobs over the next two years. The company expects to grow its turnover by between 9 and 15% per annum over the next few years. "Aker Solutions' decision to create 1300 new jobs at a new engineering hub in Chiswick is great news for the local economy and it is a vote of confidence in the skill, expertise and professionalism of our engineering sector," said Prime Minister David Cameron. "The expansion is testament to the increasing depth and strength of our partnership with Norway across the spectrum of energy issues which helps to ensure that we keep household energy bills as affordable as possible for families across the country." Øyvind Eriksen, executive chairman of Aker Solutions, added: "Oil and gas engineers in London are typically experienced, highly competent and they have an international mindset. By combining our own experience with this expertise we can offer our customers engineering related to field architecture, products and technologies both in the North Sea and internationally." Officially opened last year, the London office was set up to be a global engineering hub to support field development projects for the North Sea and worldwide. In the new, expanded office, Aker will be present with several other business areas, including subsea, drilling technologies and well intervention services. "We opened the office last autumn, and we have been growing rapidly to 200 people by early June this year," noted Eriksen. "It is very satisfying to see that we are attracting top engineering competence to our company. Based on this initial success and a highly favourable market outlook, we see that we have the potential to add a further 1300 employees by 2015. This is driven by activity growth in all key oil and gas regions worldwide."