Page 61 - Danish Offshore Industry 2020

Being a roustabout on a rig is very much a working day
at the sharp end of energy production. This is where IT WAS ENORMOUSLY
you are handling pipes which can weigh tonnes in an
environment where you are surrounded by huge forces, FRUSTRATING TO
heat, fire and pressure. Here, accidents happen very HAVE MADE A
often, from fingers and toes to hands and ankles, and
sometimes the very serious ones, too. PRODUCT WHICH
EVERYONE WAS
“I did not have to work as a roustabout for very long
before two things became clear to me,” says Kenneth THRILLED ABOUT
Hagelskær:
– AND THEN ALL
“One was that this was not a job I could put my body
through for very long. And the second was that there ACTIVITY SHUT
might be potential in changing that,” he says.
DOWN.

CONSERVATIVE INDUSTRY KENNETH HAGELSKÆR,
Kenneth Hagelskær left the roustabout life but stayed in
the industry. Back on land in 2010, he started developing GLOBAL GRAVITY
an idea with Global Gravity which could make his previ-
ous work on an offshore platform safer:
“More than half of the accidents which occur offshore From 2014 to 2017, activity was at a minimum in the
involve pipes. Broken limbs, crushed fingers. This is company.
because we handle the tubes very awkwardly and use
old-fashioned methods. For example, it is still common “It was extremely frustrating. We had an innovative
for tubes which weight several tonnes to be held in place product that everyone liked, but we couldn”t sell it,”
by wooden wedges which a roustabout has to knock into says Kenneth Hagelskær:
place,” he says.
“There were two years of virtually zero sales. We were
In 2012, the development had come far enough for him confident that the market would turn and that our prod-
to present a prototype Tube Lock to Maersk Oil: a frame uct would still be relevant when it did. So we knocked on
system which reduced the risky handling of pipes to a a lot of doors,” says Kenneth Hagelskær.
minimum.
CONFIDENCE IS CONTAGIOUS
“The concept eliminates many intermediate calculations And then came the breakthrough.
in handling, and you can attach the pipe safely all the
way from supplier to what is going underground. We “In 2017 we got results, first in the Netherlands and
tested the product with an external consultant for a in Germany, and since then it has taken off. We have
whole week, and everyone was happy, even our poten- six full-time consultants selling to the Qatari, Danish,
tial customers,” says Kenneth Hagelskær: Norwegian, British and Dutch markets, and we are on
track in South America and Indonesia,” says Kenneth
“It still didn”t get going. The innovation jump for the Hagelskær:
people who would have to work with it was too big.
The offshore industry is very conservative, and no one “After many years of no attention from the industry, we
was brave enough to try it seriously,” says Kenneth are now the bottleneck. Our rental fleet of systems grew
Hagelskær. by 200 percent last year,” says Kenneth Hagelskær.

TWO YEARS OF ZERO Today he can see the positive effects of the oil gas indus-
Instead, some customers chose to test Tube Lock”s poten- try”s conservatism:
tial on some selected campaigns.
“No one wants be the first to do something radically
“Customers got good results from their tests. But when different. But if they see other industry players – people
they were ready to roll it out for real, the oil crisis hit in they respect and trust – using a new method, then they
2014. All drilling stopped. In Denmark, we went from will too. Once you have gained the confidence of one of
four rigs to a single one – and demand for pipe handling the big ones, it rubs off. We are feeling that now,” says
disappeared,” says Kenneth Hagelskær. Kenneth Hagelskær. n

59 / JOINT INNOVAVTION HAS CREATED AN EXCELLENT SHIP