UP to 50 jobs could be created in Gwent following a deal struck between a Chepstow offshore oil and gas engineering company and a Malaysian firm.

Ocean Resource has received investment from the Ramunia Energy Corporation, which will enable the firm in Welsh Street to develop its world-beating technology and tap the expanding Far East market.

Ocean Resource are consultant engineers who research and develop oil platforms, unmanned well-control buoys and - lately - floating wind towers for use far out to sea. The company is hoping to help reverse a downturn in the UK oil and gas industry by developing advanced offshore technology.

Managing director David Bone, pictured centre with assembly member Mike German, left, and Thor Dan Hannevig, of sure Engineering Europe, said it was pleasing that technology invented and developed in Wales and recognised by the major oil and gas companies worldwide was now being actively supported by an Asian company. "It would be nice, though, to see more positive and matching support from closer at hand," he said.

"It is intended that the Welsh base of the new enterprise, to be called Ramunia Ocean Resource plc, will be an intellectual powerhouse providing to a worldwide engineering group what it does best, namely innovation and product development."

As part of the agreement, Ocean Resource will develop permanent offices in Kuala Lumpur as well as Houston and Trinidad, where it already has a presence in conjunction with a major US engineering company.

The company has made its name in devising low-cost solutions to exploiting offshore oil and gas fields which would otherwise be uneconomic to develop.

It has also won a reputation for buoy-based products, such as shallow-water production platforms and structures supporting sea surveillance systems, among others.

Its idea for floating wind towers, obviating the need for land-based or coastal windfarms which attract so much criticism, will be under test off the Irish coast with a quarter-scale prototype built by Sure Engineering of Dublin.