THE NEWS

According to Splash247, Robert Gordon University's Energy Transition Institute has published a report titled 'Delivering Positive Energy', warning that the next five years will be decisive for the North East of Scotland's energy economy. The report identifies stark choices facing the region's offshore workforce as the energy transition accelerates. The institute argues that the period leading to 2030 will shape not only the future of the regional workforce but the broader trajectory of the local energy economy.

The report frames the challenge as a structural inflection point — a window in which decisions made now will determine whether existing offshore skills are redirected toward new energy sectors or whether a workforce cliff edge materializes. The source content available does not detail specific policy recommendations or quantified workforce projections, but the framing of the next five years as decisive is central to the institute's position.

The publication arrives as Scotland's offshore sector, historically anchored to North Sea hydrocarbon production, navigates the competing demands of sustaining legacy oil and gas operations while building capacity in offshore wind, hydrogen, and carbon capture — sectors that require overlapping but not identical skill sets.

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WHY IT MATTERS

For Brazilian offshore professionals, the Scottish case is a useful reference point, not a direct parallel. The structural dynamics differ in important ways — but the underlying workforce question is one that Brazil will need to engage with on its own terms, and the timing of that engagement matters.

Brazil's offshore labor market is currently in a different phase than Scotland's. The pre-sal production ramp-up, Petrobras's multi-year FPSO contracting pipeline, and the continued development of deepwater blocks mean that near-term demand for traditional offshore skills — subsea engineering, FPSO operations, marine logistics, well intervention — remains robust. There is no immediate cliff edge visible from the Brazilian vantage point. However, the medium-term picture is more complex.

The energy transition is not arriving in Brazil at the same pace or with the same policy intensity as in Europe, but it is arriving. Offshore wind licensing in Brazilian waters is progressing through regulatory channels, and the question of how the existing offshore workforce — trained on deepwater oil and gas — repositions toward new offshore energy infrastructure is one that Brazilian operators, unions, and training institutions have not yet addressed at scale. Scotland's experience of trying to manage that transition reactively, after the workforce cliff edge becomes visible, is precisely the scenario that proactive planning seeks to avoid.

The skill adjacency question is particularly relevant for Brazil. Offshore wind installation and operations draw on marine coordination, heavy-lift logistics, subsea cabling, and dynamic positioning competencies — all of which exist in depth within the Brazilian offshore oil and gas workforce. The gap is not as wide as it might appear from a distance, but it does not close automatically. It requires deliberate investment in retraining pathways, updated certification frameworks, and coordination between operators, the regulatory environment, and technical education institutions such as SENAI and the federal universities that supply the sector.

Petrobras's own workforce planning sits at the center of this dynamic. As the dominant operator in Brazilian deepwater, its contracting decisions — on FPSOs, on drilling campaigns, on subsea services — effectively set the demand signal that the broader labor market responds to. The company's strategic horizon extends well into the 2030s on pre-sal, which provides a degree of stability that Scottish North Sea operators do not have in the same form. But that stability should not obscure the transition planning work that will be needed as the decade progresses.

For Brazilian service companies and engineering contractors, the Scottish report is a reminder that workforce strategy is not a passive function of market demand. Companies that invest early in mapping which of their existing competencies translate to new energy applications — and which require structured development — will be better positioned to compete for contracts in an offshore energy landscape that will look different in 2035 than it does today.

ANP and the broader regulatory environment also have a role here. Licensing frameworks, local content requirements, and training mandates will all influence whether Brazil's offshore workforce transition is managed as a planned evolution or addressed as an emergency once the gap becomes apparent.

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CONTEXT

Scotland's North East, centered on Aberdeen, has served as a reference market for Brazilian offshore professionals for decades — in subsea technology, FPSO design, and deepwater drilling practices. The Robert Gordon University itself has trained engineers and managers who have worked across Brazilian basins. That historical connection gives the institute's workforce warnings a degree of credibility that extends beyond the North Sea.

The 'Delivering Positive Energy' report joins a growing body of similar analyses from Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia — all hydrocarbon-producing nations with established offshore workforces now navigating the same structural question. Brazil's scale, its pre-sal production trajectory, and the relative youth of its deepwater infrastructure mean it enters this debate from a position of greater operational momentum. How it uses that time will be the defining workforce policy question of the next decade.

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Source: SPLASH247