Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Trond Giske was formally presented with the main report of the pilot study of MARINTEK’s Visionary Project at a meeting at MARINTEK on Monday February 8. The meeting was given wide press coverage, with representatives of nationals newspapers and radio and TV news showing up for the event. SINTEF’s president Unni Steinsmo personally handed over the report. The meeting, which was also attended by senior staff from NTNU, MARINTEK and SINTEF, is the first milestone in a long development process that aims to realise Norway’s marine technology knowledge centre, the Ocean Space Centre.

Giske said that he was very satisfied with the report, pointing out that investment in a marine technology knowledge centre will be a decisive element in national efforts to continue to be an international leader in producing knowledge about our ‘ocean space.’ “Norway is a high-cost country, and we can compete best in the field of knowledge generation. The Ocean Space Centre has to be seen within this context,” he said.

The pilot study presented to the Minister on Monday describes one possible concept that would fulfil the vision implicit in the project’s mandate, as given by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The project is now entering its next phase, the “concept selection study”, which will look at a range of potential concepts for describing how the vision can be implemented before a final choice is made. This phase is expected to continue until autumn 2011.

Here you can find a summery of the pilot study report (in pdf-format).