France’s Technip, a world leader in project management, engineering and construction for the energy industry, is eyeing contracts worth about US$1 billion (RM2.98 billion) in the Malaysian oil and gas industry this year.
Top on the list of projects that Technip has tendered for is the Malikai deepwater project offshore Sabah, the third deepwater development in Malaysia after Kikeh and Gumusut-Kakap, also located offshore Sabah.
“With the projects that the company is bidding and going to bid, we hope to close our order book to almost US$950 million (RM2.83 billion) this year where construction and fabrication works will typically last two to three years.
“However, we still have spare capacity available,” Technip Malaysia managing director Edgar Pushpa-ratnam said when met on the sidelines of a function held here recently.
Elaborating, he said the company, via its Malaysian unit, is bidding for the tension-leg platform (TLP) for the Malikai deepwater development offshore Sabah, which is going to be its third participation in the deepwater development in Malaysia after Kikeh and Gumusut-Kakap.
“We have executed the Kikeh’s Murphy Oil jobs, executed the Gumusut-Kakap and now the third tendering. I don’t know where we are going but hope we can win,” he said.
Pushparatnam explained that the company’s first job for the deepwater development for the Murphy’s Kikeh is the construction of the spar platform, and for the Gumusut-Kakap, with Shell as the operator, is the top-side design for a floater.
“Basically, all deepwater facili-ties are floaters because of the water depth. They are for production and drilling. We come into design as well as manage the fabrication and installation. We are like the architect and contractor at the same time,” he said.
Meanwhile, a news report recently said that the TLP contract for the Malikai field is currently in a re-bid phase, with the final investment decision expected to come by year-end.
According to the report, the operator of Malikai, Shell and other partners, namely Petronas Carigali and Conoco Phillips, are contemplating whether to maintain Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering, a subsidiary of MISC Bhd, as the preferred fabricator for the field’s TLP contract.
Back to Technip, Pushparatnam said the company has been in the Malaysian shore since 1982 and is focusing on the development of the deepwater exploration and production in the oil and gas industry in Malaysia.
“We are trying to develop deepwater expertise in Asia Pacific using Malaysia as the centre. We have attributed one deepwater job, just finishing the second one and we hope to do the third one so that we can build up expertise here in Malaysia.
“We have a few initiatives that we are doing in Technip where from shallow water, we are now going into deepwater. We have built a new factory in Johor and try to build expertise in deepwater technology to make Malaysia into a deepwater hub,” he said.
For instance, he said the more than RM600 million plant in Johor that was launched last year will help Technip to make a strong foothold in the deepwater activities in Malaysia’s oil and gas industry.
“We have a factory in Johor that manufactures flexible pipes, which is something new and will help us in this deepwater industry. Technip has a similar factory in other parts of the world, one in Brazil and one in France. This plant in Johor is the first in Asia Pacific.
“We need to have a capability for the local people to design these pipes, manufacture these pipes and produce them in Malaysia. We are trying to develop Malaysian new technologies,” he said.
Besides the flexible pipes, Pushparatnam said the company is currently on the second phase development of the plant in Johor to manufacture umbilicals, fluid tubes which provide connections between subsea equipment and platforms, or floating production systems, and enabling control from the surface.
“We plan a few (phases) but what we have invested (RM600 million) is for phase one. Part of phase two will be about RM50 million,” he said when asked the number of phases to be carried out for the development of the plant in Johor
BTimes
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