Ambitious firm that had plans for 400 jobs and £200m investment

Well-Safe was launched in mid-2017 by a trio of oil and gas industry stalwarts – Mark Patterson, Alasdair Locke and Paul Warwick.

At the time, the firm announced ambitious plans to create 400 jobs and invest £200 million in assets over three years.

The business, whose current full-time headcount is around 100, hopes to capitalise on what is expected to be a lucrative oil-well plug and abandonment (P&A) market.

Industry body Oil and Gas UK calculated in November that £15.2 billion would be spent on decommissioning in the UK North Sea over the coming decade. Well decommissioning is expected to make up about 45% of the total bill.

Well-Safe aims to drastically lower P&A costs by lining up and consecutively decommissioning large numbers of wells for multiple clients.

The company reached a major milestone with last year’s purchase of the WellSafe Guardian.

It then awarded multimillion-pound contracts to Global Energy Group for quayside and painting services, and to Rigfit7Seas for new accommodation facilities. Those tasks were expected to create about 100 new positions at the two energy service firms.

About 50 people – a mix of Well-Safe staff and contractors – are currently working on the vessel, and Well-Safe intends to add another 30-40 roles.

Well-Safe has continued to attract investment. Last October a consortium led by MW&L Capital Partners – launched in 2018 by leading City bankers Matthew Westerman and

Julian Metherell – pumped in £66m to fund the next growth phase.

Mr Metherell was previously a partner at Goldman Sachs.

Well-Safe chief executive Phil Milton said yesterday the MW&L consortium had taken a “significant shareholding” in the business, but not a majority holding.