# Haar Compute takes ownership of Skerry Alpha

> Haar Compute takes over the Skerry Alpha oil platform to make it the hub of the first commercial AI training cluster built around a converted oil installation.

Part of [Oil Rigs to Training Rigs](https://blind-ant.com/pieces/oil-rigs-to-training-rigs/index.md), a Piece.

Press release, 14 March 2031. Haar Compute, Aberdeen.

Haar Compute takes over the Skerry Alpha oil platform to make it the hub of the first commercial AI training cluster built around a converted oil installation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE · Aberdeen · 14 March 2031

*First North Sea seabed training ring to go live in 2032. Platform saved from decommissioning. 340 offshore roles retained.*

**ABERDEEN** — Haar Compute today confirmed it has completed the transfer of the Skerry Alpha production platform, 140 miles east of Aberdeen, from its previous operator. The platform will become the hub of the world's first commercial AI training cluster built around a converted oil installation.

Under the agreement, Skerry Alpha will be converted rather than decommissioned. Its drill floor will become a switching and power distribution centre. Its process deck will house battery storage. Its cranes will deploy and recover sealed compute pods on the surrounding seabed, where year-round water temperatures of six to eight degrees Celsius provide cooling at no energy cost.

The platform will draw its primary power from the adjacent Skerry offshore wind farm. Training workloads will be scheduled around wind output, backed by on-platform batteries, onshore pumped hydro, and a hydrogen storage facility in the depleted Skerry gas reservoir, connected through the platform's existing export pipeline.

"Everyone else is trying to put data centres in space," said **Fiona Gauld, Chief Executive of Haar Compute**. "We looked at the North Sea and saw everything space is trying to fake. Free cooling, free power, and a workforce that has spent fifty years learning how to put delicate, expensive equipment on the seabed and keep it running. We didn't need rockets. We needed Aberdeen."

The conversion will retain 340 offshore and onshore roles that would otherwise have been lost to decommissioning, including helicopter crews, ROV pilots, subsea engineers, crane operators and marine logistics staff. Haar Compute has committed to recruiting at least 80 per cent of its offshore workforce from people with previous oil and gas experience.

Responsibility for eventual removal of the platform remains with the previous operator under a ring-fenced decommissioning bond, with Haar Compute liable for all new infrastructure.

In line with the conditions of its seabed lease, twenty per cent of the cluster's training capacity will be reserved for British research institutions and public-interest models, and a share of revenue will go to a Scottish community wealth fund.

## Notes to editors

- Each compute pod is a sealed, nitrogen-filled pressure vessel roughly the size of a shipping container, designed for recovery and refit every three to four years.

- The design builds on seabed data centre trials carried out off Orkney in the early 2020s, which reported hardware failure rates around one eighth of land-based equivalents.

- Haar Compute does not describe the site as "100 per cent renewable." Its target is that at least 90 per cent of annual compute will run on wind or stored wind.

## About Haar Compute

Haar Compute is an Aberdeen-based company converting North Sea oil and gas infrastructure into AI training capacity. It is named after the haar, the cold sea fog that rolls in off the North Sea. "It's what keeps us cool," says the company.

[Next: Subsea Compute Technician](https://blind-ant.com/pieces/oil-rigs-to-training-rigs/subsea-compute-technician/).