Title of Presentation: North Sea Transition Deal People and Skills Update
Presented by: Michael Love (Head of Skills Policy)
Company: OPITO
The UK’s energy transition, ushered in by goals of achieving net zero carbon by 2050, has prompted challenges to the oil and gas sector.
Decarbonising the multi-billion-dollar industry reveals the need to explore funding, partnerships, and, most especially, the development of personnel skills and careers to ensure the transition’s success. Hence, the North Sea Transition Deal was materialised.
After its enactment in March 2021, Michael Love’s presentation, Head of Skills Policy at OPITO, provides key updates on the deal with particular importance on the industry’s people and skills segment. In this article, learn about:
what the North Sea Transition Deal (NSTD) is,
how the skills passport empowers a smoother skills and career transition for workers,
and the action plans considered in fulfilling 2030 outcomes under the NSTD’s People & Skills Strategy, led by OPITO.
What’s the deal?: North Sea Transition Deal
Despite oil and gas operations emitting large carbon emissions, authorities still foresee the vital role it will play in the energy sector. As such, to help it transition more efficiently in the face of Net Zero Carbon goals, the North Sea Transition Deal (NTSD) was developed.
The NTSD is a transformational agreement launched in 2021 between the UK government, the Scottish government, and the offshore energy industry. It’s a joint effort to deliver skills, infrastructure, and innovation in the long run, anchored on the already established oil and gas industry.
This means maximizing the expertise, investment potential, and strong supply chain that offshore energy has to prepare for a zero-carbon future and both safeguard and generate new jobs to boost the UK economy. In 2022, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) was established to oversee the energy shift.
Love outlines the five key outcomes of the NSTD in his presentation:
On supply decarbonisation: Reduce production emissions on the pathway to net-zero by 2050.
On CCUS: Develop and invest in Carbon Capture, Usage, and Storage infrastructures.
On hydrogen: Create the economic environment for low-carbon hydrogen production to flourish.
On supply chain transformation: Support the transformation of the oil and gas supply chain to service low-carbon energy sectors.
On people and skills: Support new jobs, reskilling of the oil and gas workforce, and a smooth industry transition.
How can oil & gas talent transition efficiently?
The energy transition will heavily impact the labour market in the next 30 years, with around 6.3 million people expecting to face either an increase or decrease in skills demand. And with the focus shifting to CCUS, wind, and hydrogen, a tremendous opportunity for workers to enter other energy sectors with their skills is presenting itself.
Just in 2021, out of 148,500 offshore energy workers, the oil and gas industry supported 118,400 of those, both direct and indirect workers. It was reported that 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce has transferrable skills to cleaner energy sectors as net-zero carbon goals are being achieved.
The NSTD highlights those key pieces of information as it forwards the People & Skills Strategy (P&SS), led by OPITO, in ensuring a smoother energy transition. Sitting at the core of the deal, the P&SS formulates an integrated, comprehensive plan to:
reskill existing oil and gas workforce,
provide a digital solution to ease this process,
guarantee career movement from one energy production to another,
support up to 40,000 jobs across the supply chain,
and continue to retain and attract diverse talent to benefit the decarbonisation campaign.
Overview of the People & Skills Strategy
Love shared the P&SS framework their company is developing alongside the NSTA, which consists of 5 action plans with goals set for 2030.
I. Action Plan 1: Aligning offshore energy standards
Across energy sectors, standards and frameworks are different, and the lack of recognition and streamlining hinders workers from crossing careers. As such, the vision of workforce mobility enabled through an aligned offshore energy training standards framework must be realised.
As per Love, this action plan targets 4 strategic priorities:
Create a coalition of standards bodies to map, align, and mutually recognise offshore energy safety and technical training standards.
Develop an integrated framework of offshore energy safety and technical training standards built on recognition, which is simple, flexible, visible, and equitable and avoids duplication of training wherever possible.
Implement a digital solution that enables skilled workers to move easily across sectors, creating a more mobile and flexible workforce.
Develop a plan to extend existing training standards to emerging sectors such as hydrogen and CCUS to achieve high levels of safety, operational, and technical performance.
II. Action Plan 2: Meeting future skills demand
The UK’s campaign for decarbonisation foresees a rise in demand for skilled workers in the long run—a demand that will be disproportionate to supply. Alongside the competitive recruitment against other offshore regions and the lack of an integrated proposition in attracting future talent, the UK’s offshore sector needs to step up in drawing in and retaining the people it needs for success.
Action Plan 2 has 5 strategic priorities:
Develop an offshore energy vocational education pathway covering apprenticeships, T-Levels, and national vocational qualifications.
Map and support a more integrated approach to graduate and post-graduate attraction, including internships and work experience placements.
Further develop and promote the My Energy Future STEM programme, including the creation of an employee value proposition for the offshore energy industry.
Map and develop transition pathways to support the attraction and mobility of people from other engineering and technology sectors, including the transition of ex-military personnel.
Support the continued development and implementation of the Centre of Doctoral Training in Geoscience, creating the next generation of academic expertise in the energy transition.
III. Action Plan 3: Defining workforce skills
Furthering the skills of the UK’s offshore energy workforce is pivotal to ensuring a smooth transition. Defining and investing in the required skills for offshore enables workers to have multi-industrial skills and access to clearer career paths for easier employment shifts across the energy sector.
This plan highlights 3 strategic priorities:
Define clear career pathways across each sector of the industry, making visible the career opportunities across the offshore energy sector.
Identify and prioritise future skills requirements across technical, digital, safety, and business disciplines and create alignment across industry, government, and academia.
Adopt a digitally enabled approach to delivering training, development, and lifelong learning to enable the workforce to develop cross-industry skills and careers.
IV. Action Plan 4: Improving skills data intelligence
Love and OPITO recognise the lack of consistent and comparable data in the offshore energy industry, making workforce forecasts and data management a challenge. Developing clear, concise, and effective data collection methods will allow for better record-keeping and analysis, as well as informed decisions from key stakeholders.
The plan forwards 3 strategic priorities:
- Agree on an integrated approach to people and skills data collection, including common skills and job classifications to support forecasting.
- Develop and introduce a common taxonomy for job roles and job families to improve sector analysis and support mobility of skills across sectors.
- Deliver a periodic offshore energy workforce people and skills survey, providing robust data, intelligence, and analysis of offshore energy people and skills.
V. Action Plan 5: Championing diversity and inclusion
Lastly, in ensuring that offshore energy talent transitions successfully in the face of net-zero carbon goals, social aspects must also be developed aside from technical career components. This means creating a talent pool and environment that values inclusivity, equality, and diversity.
Love speaks of the following strategic priorities for this action plan:
Conduct an employer survey to understand the oil and gas sector’s current demographics, establish a baseline, and publish recommended actions to help improve diversity, with follow-up surveys to be run throughout the decade.
Create a baseline of data across characteristic groups and benchmark against other sectors.
Explore the opportunity to create aligned offshore energy sectors D&I roadmaps, highlighting areas where action needs to be focused with required resources, advice, and support mechanisms for industry to lead the change.
The value of the Skills Passport
In conjunction with the P&SS framework, the creation of a Skills Passport is seen as a strong resolution to boost skills and workforce development. The Skills Passport is a digital tool that will enable offshore talent to transition to other industries. It displays one’s existing qualifications and trainings all in one location, allowing for:
easy skills and career comparison (as it is recognised across sectors),
comprehensive record-keeping of trainings attended and qualifications attained,
and acquisition of worksite access.
Just this January 22, the initiative went live with an “Energy Skills Passport website,” delivering the capabilities it promised. As of today, users can create personal accounts listing their qualifications and then select from a limited number of offshore wind roles.
Interested in hearing more and learning from industry experts?
Join us at SPE Offshore Europe and expand your knowledge on the offshore energy value chain.
2–5 September 2025 | P&J Live, Aberdeen, Scotland
Why do we need to ensure skills & personnel transition?
Machineries, plants, and tech are indeed important, but the lifeblood of the offshore industry will always be its people. Expertise and best practices are only developed under the guidance of skilled, hardworking talents in the industry.
And as the energy transition ushers in changes and challenges to people and skills, it is important that nobody gets left behind to successfully champion the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.
As Love’s presentation explains, over 40,000 oil and gas workers are expected to transition to other sectors as the shift happens. In this case, the only wise move is to empower workers by honing their skills, equipping them with solutions, and supporting them with policies to ensure both business and people success.
The future is in the people
The People & Skills Strategy is a testament to the commitment of authorities and participating organisations in ensuring that nobody gets left behind in the energy transition.
With the expected changes and recognised challenges in streamlining labour and careers across sectors, empowering the skills and talents of workers is necessary to achieve decarbonisation success. It should be remembered that no offshore energy operation will function efficiently without the competent people who make it possible.
By choosing not to forego the existing workforce, coupled with strategies to attract new talents, accelerating the energy transition no longer seems a far-fetched idea.
Join industry leaders & professionals at the epicentre of the offshore industry—SPE Offshore Europe 2025 is FREE to attend.
2–5 September 2025 | P&J Live, Aberdeen, Scotland