Energy meets innovation. Ahead of AMA: Energy 2026, 3D Printing Industry goes deep on additive manufacturing in one of the world’s most critical sectors. Energy giant Equinor once calculated that it was sitting on €2.5 billion worth of spare parts, “most of which will never be used,” a figure on-demand manufacturer Pelagus’ Abedin Gagani cited to illustrate one of the energy industry’s most stubborn and costly inefficiencies.
For the Business Development Manager, it represents exactly the problem his company was set up to address. Speaking at our AMA: Energy 2025 event, he made the case for why the traditional approach to spare parts management in the energy sector is long overdue for a rethink.
The 2026 edition of our AMA: Energy online conference returns this month. Register now!
The Hidden Cost of Ageing Energy Assets
To understand why, it helps to look at the infrastructure first. Some 70% of oil and gas assets are over 25 years old, many exceeding 40 years of operation, and as Gagani put it, “we hear [across] the industry about life extension projects and so forth.”
These are ageing assets comprising approx. 50,000 individual parts each, many of them legacy or highly customised components that OEMs/Genuine Makers stopped stocking long ago.
Gagani’s advice to operators tempted to stick with traditional manufacturing for new designs was to think beyond the immediate cost of a component and consider things long term.
“You may need this part today and maybe 30% cheaper to make it using traditional processes,” he said. “But then what happens down the line, if say 5, 10, 15 years from now, you will start to need one, two, three or more spare parts. And that will be urgent. And then what do you expect the manufacturing company to do? Maybe the company that manufactured those parts doesn’t exist anymore, even if you have the engineering and design IP for those parts.”
It is a sobering calculation, and one the industry has largely deferred. The result, as Gagani described it, is a choice between two unappealing options: “either lots of parts kept on inventory or a risk of long downtime.” Neither is cheap.
A typical plant experiences around 27 days of unscheduled maintenance per year, with losses ranging from $38 to $88 million in some cases.
That is where Pelagus, a joint venture between thyssenkrupp and the Wilhelmsen Group, comes in. The manufacturing partner’s model replaces physical stockpiles with digital ones, manufacturing components on demand through a network of more than 80 production sites worldwide.
Each part is captured in a digital package containing everything needed to manufacture, inspect and certify it, held in what Gagani described as “their own secure digital warehouse” for the OEM. When a part is needed, it is produced close to where it is needed. “We’re talking about days instead of weeks or months,” he said.
For OEMs carrying legacy portfolios, it changes the calculus entirely. “All of a sudden they don’t need to disrupt their current production to serve legacy components that are needed very urgently at some operator location,” he explained.
The commercial stakes are just as significant. Operators who cannot wait are already sourcing parts through whatever channel is available. “End users are doing that. I mean, when they need a part, they will find some way to do it. So, the question is, are OEMs going to leave this opportunity behind and leave this revenue on the table, or do they want to leverage it?”
Gagani’s argument is that OEMs do not have to cede that ground. The on-demand manufacturer’s proposition to OEMs is not just efficiency. It is control. “We’re working together with the OEM and not bypassing them,” Gagani said.
“Working on a digital inventory process or a project with us, they ensure that their IP remains protected. Whereas today, we know that there are a lot of factors in the grey market space that are reverse engineering parts, which they don’t own the IP for.”
Digital Inventory as Operational Risk Management
When it comes to operators, working within that OEM framework delivers something equally valuable. Their business is keeping assets running, not solving engineering problems.
The model offers “an insurance that they can have those parts within a certain amount of time,” and “genuine quality” that matters when liability for downstream equipment failure is on the line. Equinor has already seen what this looks like in practice, recovering more than €80 million through its shift toward digital inventory.
Meanwhile, the Kawasaki Heavy Industries case study he shared highlighted what is possible when the approach is taken further still. Faced with delivering a return pipe to a vessel in Japan, the OEM worked with Pelagus’ engineers to redesign the component entirely for additive manufacturing rather than simply reproduce it.
The result improved flow efficiency and cut the part’s weight from 75 to 8 kg. “Now think about it,” Gagani said. “A part that previously took several months, like four or five months to deliver, was now produced, inspected, certified, and installed on board of a ship in 15 days.” The weight reduction had an immediate consequence on the ground too: the crew could install it without cranes.
For Hafnia, one of the world’s largest petrochemical tanker operators with a fleet of over 200 vessels, the gains have been significant, though Gagani could not share more detail.
“We’ve really done this calculation, how [much] time they used in the past to source some critical and urgent spare parts, and how much time they saved with us, and this added up in several years.”
So why is adoption not moving faster? Gagani was precise about where the friction sits, and it is not the technology. “I’m maybe oversimplifying, but many people can set up print shops and reverse engineer parts, and then provide them. But then at the moment, people start asking questions in terms of how do we qualify this part? It becomes a big challenge.”
Without OEM involvement, qualification becomes a problem that no amount of manufacturing capability can solve. “If parts have to be engineered once, then in order to make them available for AM, for on-demand manufacturing, we have to engineer them again,” he said. “Within the day, they’re really the key to enable on-demand manufacturing for additive for the energy industry.”
And even where OEM engagement exists, there is a more mundane obstacle waiting on the other side. Within large operator organisations, validated decisions about additively manufactured components do not always travel well across procurement teams and geographies.
“They don’t know that the operator has defined that this part is 3D printed, is good enough actually to be used for their applications. And so they’re like, you know what, I better be on the safer side and then order the traditional one, even if it’s going to take longer.” Fixing that, Gagani suggested, requires less effort than the industry assumes.
His advice to energy companies thinking seriously about additive manufacturing had nothing to do with technology or infrastructure. “People. It’s really about the people enablement.”
A part produced additively may cost slightly more upfront, but “the savings in terms of operational efficiency, reduction of downtime, freeing up capital, which is otherwise occupied or which is otherwise utilised in stock, that becomes obsolete over time,” he said, more than makes up for it. “So people, people, people. That’s it. The technology is out there. Of course, it could improve, but I think it’s in a good place.”
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
To stay up to date with the latest 3D printing news, don’t forget to subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.
Explore the full Future of 3D Printing and Executive Survey series from 3D Printing Industry, featuring perspectives from CEOs, engineers, and industry leaders on the industrialization of additive manufacturing, 3D printing industry trends 2026, qualification, supply chains, and additive manufacturing industry analysis.
Featured image shows AMA: Energy 2026. How 3D Printing is used in the Energy Sector.
