By Iain Packham Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--Marine safety company Cosalt PLC (CSLT.LN) has identified a market opportunity in the offshore wind sector and is in early stage talks with Denmark's Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS.KO) and Germany's Siemens AG (SIE.XE), Chief Executive Mark Lejman said Tuesday. The provider of marine safety products for the oil and gas markets, which Tuesday reported a decline in first-half revenue, said it is studying how it can develop in the offshore energy market given its geographic position and engineering skills. CEO Lejman told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview the expertise may be slightly different--electrical engineering rather than mechanical engineering--but it is studying ways of transfering its skills from the offshore energy sector to the offshore wind sector. Despite current trading being lower than anticipated, foreign export levels have remained resilient, and Norway in particular is seeing good demand, with revenue in the first six months increasing over the last six months of the last year, the company said. Lejman said the boost from Norway was due to Statoil ASA (STO) opening up several potential areas for work and drilling, adding "that's why we're seeing more activity from our customers like Subsea 7 Inc (SUB.OS), Acergy S.A. (ACGY) and Technip S.A. (TEC.FR) in the Norwegian sector". A lot of the maintenance work on the rigs is done in the summer months--June, July and August--and that will be true both in the Norwegian sector and the Aberdeen sector, Lejman said. For the half year ended May 2 Cosalt reported a pretax loss of GBP1.5 million compared with a loss of GBP3.4 million, as it cut costs. Revenue was nearly 9% lower at GBP48.3 million. The company also reported that its pension scheme deficit had been cut by GBP1.0 million to GBP10.5 million due to an improvement of asset values and it expects ongoing discussions with trustees to lead to further cuts. Chief Financial Officer Mike Reynolds said Cosalt has appointed an investment manager to work with the board and the trustees to get the optimum investment balance and the company has also initiated a liability management exercise. Reynolds was unable to give an idea of how much these actions could cut the deficit by, as discussions are ongoing. -By Iain Packham, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-7842-9269; iain.packham@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 29, 2010 07:20 ET (11:20 GMT)