THE OCEAN Concluded

THE OCEAN commenced for the first time in Bergen this week stemming from a wish from the ocean industries, academia and public agencies to bring all "ocean’ers" together.

Arne Hjeltens introduced Prime Minister Erna Solberg as the Ocean Prime Minister, as she rules over 5 times as much ocean as land.

Solberg spoke to an audience of over 400 people, about how the ocean industries are expected to create 40 million jobs globally by 2030 and that the ocean economy will double in the same period. This fact she stated ; creates opportunities for increased exports and growth for Norway, which is why the ocean industries are high up on the government's agenda.

– We are a world-leading player in all ocean industries and we are one of the few countries to have a complete ocean cluster. We find this competence in Bergen, where the ocean economy value chain is complete like no where else and represented by shipping, seafood oil and gas, services and equipment, academia and R&D institutions. This region has what it takes to facilitate opportunities across the ocean industries, said the "Ocean" Prime Minister.

Crossover and Back

Equinor has been drawing from decades of oil and gas experience, to use this technology and experience in the renewables industry and also vice versa – key words being the safety factor or HMS, and Equinor’s huge oil and gas “technology muscle” said Beate Myking, Senior Vice President for New Energy Solutions in Equinor. Myking continued with telling all about Equinor’s offshore floating wind projects.

Talk Shows

No less than 5 talk shows were executed by Arne Hjeltnes where a multitude of ocean players and cluster members like Equinor, Corvus Energy, IMR (Havforskningsinstituttet), the University of Bergen, NTNU, PWC and Xylem (Aanderaa Data Instruments) were among the guests.

– When we had a crossover situation; diversifying from the oil and gas industry in to the aquaculture industry; getting in touch with the right players was an important success factor. In our case, this was driven a lot by the ready-made clusters found here in Bergen like GCE Ocean Technology and NCE Seafood Innovation, said Inger Graves from Xylem Analytics. – These meeting places and programmes that the cluster provides, enable companies like us to get in touch with the market and learning who we should work with, who we should sell to and what they need, Graves concluded.

THE OCEAN is concluded, but we hope to see you at THE OCEAN 17– 19 September 2020.