Offshore man Verner Andersen said goodbye to Semco Maritime in mid-September after 14 years, where he was vice president and head of the company's oil and gas business until 2021. Since 2021, he has worked part-time as a senior advisor in the company.< /p>
Board work has been part of Verner Andersen's working life since he got his first board position in 2002 in a legendary club.
- I got my very first board position in 2002 in the "Esbjerg Petroleum Club", which has existed for over 40 years, where Henning Kruse was involved from the start, says Verner Andersen about a club where you previously had to be recommended to become a member . It's not like that anymore.
The "Petroleum Club", as it is still called, used to be exclusively for the oil and gas industry, but now it is also for renewable forms of energy. Therefore, the club has also been given a new official name.
- EnergiEsbjerg, as we are now called, aims to have some technical lectures and social events, and we have almost 300 members, explains Verner Andersen.
Lindø
In 2012, when Verner Andersen was vice president of Semco Maritime, he ended up on the board of Dansk Offshore.
- My boss Steen Brødbæk was actually supposed to sit there as CEO of Semco, but he wanted me to have the place, says Verner Andersen.
Through the board position in the then Offshore Center Denmark, he became involved in the business development of Lindø, and here he ended up together with two well-known Danes, among others.
- I sat in the middle between Poul Nyrup and Anders Eldrup, says Verner Andersen, who received professional board training at Insead in Kolding and in Paris to be extra well-dressed for board work.
The place between the former prime minister and the former head of DONG was not, however, the only time he had something to do with Lindø. At the same time as the closure of Lindø in 2012, Semco also lacked welders to work offshore, and Verner Andersen clearly remembers how he went to Lindø to recruit shipyard workers.
- I needed welders and went over there to sell the offshore tjansen. But they didn't seem particularly interested until I told them that you spend three weeks at home and two weeks offshore. It meant they could stay in their house on Funen, he says.
The work to get new jobs for Lindø also ended as a success.
- I am absolutely convinced that there are more jobs on Lindø today than when Maersk was there, says Verner Andersen.
The oil and gas exhibition
In a board position, he helped establish a special exhibition about Denmark's offshore history at the Fisheries & Maritime Museum in Esbjerg. The idea of an oil and gas exhibition arose between the then director of the museum Morten Hahn-Pedersen and Verner Andersen.
The duo organized a fundraising trip on the Fisheries & Maritime Museum's own fishing cutter during the Tall Ship Race departure. Here were specially invited guests with wallets in order with the 15 million DKK for travel. DKK, which were necessary to realize the exhibition on oil and gas.
- We had food and good wine with us on the trip, says Verner Andersen, who among other things had invited some of Esbjerg's wealthy men, and it should turn out to pay off.
- Henning Kruse and Kurt Skov outbid each other, Verner Andersen remembers clearly.
The founder of Esbjerg Oilfield Services, Henning Kruse, and the founder of Blue Water, Kurt Skov, are two pioneers within suppliers to the oil and gas industry. But it now ended up with the money coming from somewhere else.
- It ended up that we got all 15 million. DKK from the A.P.-Møller Foundation, he says, adding that Bel Air's owner Susanne Hessellund also sponsored a helicopter dummy, which ended up hanging from the ceiling in the exhibition.
But the joy over the exhibition about a great and important era in Danish energy history did not last forever. The exhibition ended up being shelved eight years after it had been opened. But it was absolutely not with Verner Andersen's good will.
- I did everything I could for it to be preserved. But it was in vain, says Verner Andersen, who is sorry that the exhibition no longer exists.
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