ENERGY and construction minister Brian Wilson has provided a boost for the region's offshore industry.

Mr Wilson was in Middlesbrough to confirm that KYE's fabrication yard on the Tees would provide materials for a new gas pipeline in the Irish Sea, creating more than 100 jobs.

He then travelled to Hartlepool to launch a new centre of excellence at Heerema.

Mr Wilson gave formal consent for Burlington Resource's Calder Field in the East Irish Sea, a £150m project creating 200 jobs in Cumbria, as well as 100 in Middlesbrough.

The news is a boost for KYE, of Lowestoft, which took over part of the former Odebrecht yard, next to Middlesbrough's Riverside stadium, in January.

It signed a deal with Able UK to lease part of the 51-acre site at Dock Point, until a £6m facility at Teesside Environmental Reclamation and Recycling Centre in Hartlepool is completed.

The new jobs are part of plans to create about 600 jobs at the operation.

The site will then be demolished to become part of Middlesbrough's flagship Middlehaven development.

As part of the Irish Sea development, KYE will help to build a 50km pipeline linking the Calder development to the mainland.

The Calder field is the first of five smaller fields, known as the Rivers Cluster, to be developed.

Speaking at KYE's fabrication yard, Mr Wilson said: "Calder is good news for the oil and gas industry.

"The 50km pipeline will connect an offshore wellhead platform to onshore processing facilities at Burlington Resources new Rivers Terminal.

"All the field's produced gas, water and condensate will be transported through the pipeline to the onshore terminal."

The venture would create permanent employment, with further opportunities for the UK supply chain as contracts for the main parts of the project were awarded, he said.

The minister welcomed KYE's move into the Tees Valley and praised Able UK's vision of marketing the former Odebrecht yard as a multi-user facility for fabrication and related activities.

Following his visit to Teesside, Mr Wilson was on Tyneside, at Amec in Wallsend, to launch Stingray, a prototype steam generator, designed and built in the region with help from the DTI.

Stingray has been developed by The Engineering Business in Northumberland as a way of harnessing tidal power.

The £1.8m prototype device will be deployed near Shetland to determine the costs of building and operating the devices. A cluster of machines is expected to be in operation by 2004. It is envisaged that they will eventually be linked in to the National Grid