Shetland Islands Broadcasting Company

The delays in the arrivals of cable repair ships off Orkney for repairs to the Shefa 2 subsea cable, including to Shetland last summer and now for the repair of the subsea cable to the north isles of Orkney, is a warning of more such delays in the future.

Last July the 99 metre dedicated fibre-optic cable-repair ship Cable Vigilance took 9 days to arrive for the repair to the damage to the Shefa-2 cable off South Ronaldsay and, in September, it took 20 days to arrive for the break off the Ayre of Cara. Now the 100 metre cable ship Pierre de Fermat has taken 26 days to arrive off Rousey.

The floating production storge and offloading vessel Petrojarl Rosebank is continuing northwards, after lying off Tenerife.

CB&I, the American Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, has completed the acquisition of Petrofac Asset Solutions, a division of the energy services firm Petrofac. There is a widespread view that Petrofac never quite recovered from its losses of around £284 million from building the Shetland Gas Plant by the time the plant was completed in 2016.

A large opinion poll by YouGov for Sky News and Independent Radio News has predicted that the Scottish Liberal Democrats will retain the Shetland seat in the Scottish Parliament elections in just under 4 weeks and that the Scottish Liberal Democrats will also retain the Orkney seat.

Former prime minister Tony Blair’s think tank has called on the UK government to back Rosebank, 85 nautical miles west-north-west of Unst, along with other fields including Jackdaw, to protect the United Kingdom from the economic shocks exposed by the Iran war.

The latest on the Bluemull Sound ferry Geira is that it will remain out of service for another two to three weeks due to delays while berthed alongside at Shearers.