Engineering group GE's oil and gas division has opened a new wireline manufacturing facility and headquarters in Farnborough.
The facility supports the company’s Downhole Technology platforms’ and will house design engineering, manufacturing, testing and headquarters operations under a single, 56,000 sq ft facility. More than 180 highly skilled operations, engineering, sales and office support personnel are employed at the site, which is located within QinetiQ’s Cody Technology Park.
Downhole Technology provides oilfield services companies with advanced technology solutions designed to measure and understand both the condition of a drill site as well as the flow of hydrocarbons from a well. The information can then be used to help optimise oil and gas production in the $320 billion global oilfield services segment.
Performing the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, Gerald Howarth, MP for Aldershot and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, said: “I am delighted to open this new… GE facility which supports oil and gas production around the world with high tech equipment and services, generating high skilled jobs in the UK. I also am pleased that GE has decided to locate this operation in Hampshire, within the world-class Cody Technology Park.”
GE UK’s chief executive Mark Elborne, present at the launch, said: “With 19,000 employees and 60 locations in the UK, GE is a major contributor to the UK’s manufacturing base, to UK jobs and to the local communities where we operate,” he said. “We have invested $13 billion in British businesses since 2002, and we continue to expand our presence, drawing on the wealth of engineering expertise the UK must continue to nurture. This new GE oil and gas facility will enable us to improve our wireline supply-chain capabilities to benefit the oil and gas customers we supply around the world.”
The new facility adds to GE Oil & Gas’ considerable presence in the United Kingdom, which includes more than 2,400 employees based at manufacturing, service and test facilities in Aberdeen and Montrose in Scotland and Cramlington, Newcastle, Nailsea and Farnborough in England.
