Fisher German is responsible for managing thousands of kilometres of UK pipelines and cables in the UK on behalf of oil, gas, water, electricity and other utilities businesses.
26 years after winning the first deal in the sector, our expanding utilities team now has more than 50 members and serves virtually all the major oil and gas transmission companies, as well as electricity, water and other service businesses. Thousands of enquiries are dealt with through a state of the art online utility search enquiry system, Linesearch.
Today this fast evolving sector faces new and different challenges. “In the past”, says Andrew Bridge, “it may have taken a year to get the correct steelwork on a new pipeline contract in place. Now, the major hold-ups are more likely to be down to environmental factors, such as when protected species of animal are thought to be in an area that a pipeline is projected to cross. There may be certain times of year when you can’t even check if they are there because they might be asleep. The sector has completely changed now.”
In future, the company expects to see more and different types of utilities put underground. Andrew Bridge says that as roads become ever more congested there will be more demand for pipelines to take liquids and gases underground. He says: “With roads getting busy and congested, trying to move things by tanker is only going to get more difficult. Using pipes will reduce the requirement to use the roads.” As he points out, there are also disused underground pipes for which new uses could now be found. Old fuel lines could, for example, be used to transport oxygen or hydrogen instead.
A new and growing area of the market is in carbon capture, which involves piping carbon dioxide into the underground chambers left empty by the removal of natural gas and oil – just one of a number of issues that Andrew Jackson researched on a recent study trip to the United States.
Andrew says: “It gave us a lot of information about how we can improve our service, get information out to people who need it and improve what we do across the UK.” He continues: “I think it shows that we are trying to expand and continually improve the service we deliver to our clients, by staying ahead of the latest developments.”
For more information go to Linesearch.org.uk or contact Andrew Bridge on 01530 410828 email andrew.bridge@fishergerman.co.uk
