Ambitious plans to establish a new £20 million strategic business unit based in Aberdeen Scotland, have been revealed at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.

Speaking on the Circle Technical Services stand at OTC, Circle’s Managing Director David Dent explained how his company’s acquisition by the Proserv Group had made the Abandonment and Decommissioning Strategic Business Unit possible. He has been given responsibility, by the group, to bring the plans to fruition.

“The Proserv Group’s acquisition of both Circle and Tytan Jetting last year has presented us with an outstanding opportunity to restructure the business, develop our existing technologies and enhance our international support network.

“We anticipate that the new unit will be operating later this year. We are currently securing premises and anticipate an international workforce by the year end of over 100 people.”

Arve Sem-Henriksen, CEO of the Proserv Group, commented, “When Circle joined the Proserv Group we said we were determined to become a major player in the decommissioning market. The formation of the Abandonment and Decommissioning Strategic Business Unit is part of that strategy.

“This will be one of five strategic business units within the Proserv Group and we see this as the way forward for they focus the full breadth of our resources on key areas of business.

“Our aim is to develop a £200 million company within 2008, with each unit taking a global lead within its business segment.”

The five Proserv Group strategic business units will be:

· Test and control systems

· Instrument and calibration

· Oil and gas sampling

· Abandonment and decommissioning

· Speciality machining

The new Abandonment and Decommissioning Strategic Business Unit will focus on three sectors of the subsea market:

· Subsea and marine tooling

· Ultra high-pressure and high-pressure pumps

· Abandonment and decommissioning.

“These three areas of business are already well served by individual group companies. But, bringing together the wealth of experience and expertise that we have in these areas, will enable us to develop new and innovative world-class technologies and to supply and support them on a truly global basis,” David Dent continued.

“At Circle we already have a well-established base in Houma, Louisiana. Indeed, the USA now represents about 40% of our business worldwide. Through our membership of the Proserv Group, we are about to strengthen our US presence with a new group office in Houston.

“We recently established Circle Technical Services based in Perth, Australia and we are in the process of setting up a new operation in the Middle East, operating out of the Proserv base at Jebel Ali in Dubai.

“With the Promac base in Norway, our existing base in Singapore and our agency agreement with Seaharvest in North Africa, that will give us a total of seven geographical locations to be supported by the new strategic business unit.”