31 StorIT
StorIT, a data storage provider in the MENA region, has announced the availability of Mellanox’s high performance computing solutions for the Oil and Gas sector, which will help companies improve productivity for Oil and Gas high performance simulations. Mellanox offers InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions that accelerate and maximize the capability of HPC systems and enable simulations to be executed faster and in higher quantity.
The vendor’s 40Gb/s InfiniBand and 10Gb/s Ethernet interconnect solutions are designed for multi-core cluster environments and can efficiently handle multiple data streams simultaneously while guaranteeing fast and reliable data transfers for each of the streams.
With latency as low as 1 microsecond, throughput as high as 40Gb/s, extreme message rate and low CPU overhead, Mellanox solutions enable fast and highly scalable communication among server processing units and storage systems, and therefore maximise the HPC system utilisation into the high 90% range, on average 50% higher than other networking solutions.
Article continues on next page …
32 Pentair
Pentair is a one-stop shop for any contractor and operators with valves and flow control needs.
Valve suppliers tend to be ill-received in such a highly saturated market, innovation within the valves and pumps technology market is typically slow and rarely makes the headlines.
Despite all this, Pentair has turned quite a few heads over the last few years by doing something that no other valve supplier in the region has managed to do.
Acquiring a foundry is no easy task and by no means, a small commitment. This is especially true in the Middle East, a region where such moves are practically unheard of. And yet, early last year, the Switzerland-based company did just that when it merged with Tyco International’s Flow-Control business.
The move allowed Pentair to leverage the Sharjah-based, fully-integrated valves and controls manufacturing facility to offer something no one else in the region can. “We are the Middle East’s premier fully integrated valve manufacturer,” says Ramesh Nuggihalli, vice president and managing director for Pentair Middle East.
While many competing flow control distributors only have sales and distribution offices in the region, some with the occasional service facility, Pentair has gone one step further. “A lot of people assemble and have sales offices, but we took it to the next level, we wanted to be local,” said Nuggihalli.
“This campus has everything, starting with sales, manufacturing, procurement, after sales services and project management. Located in one campus, you get the full lifecycle of any project.”
Being able to manufacture from within the region has many obvious advantages, especially for clients looking for engineered solutions that are specific to their needs. Delivery time and transportation costs are two of the most obvious and immediate benefits for clients; ones which Nuggihalli is not shy to point out.
Naturally there are other advantages to being entirely based in the region, especially the Middle East where the development of unconventional and sour gas fields continues to attract increasing levels of investment.
“In a region where you use sour gas, the metallurgical requirements are much more stringent,” he explains. “We are able to make sure that the metal quality and the sophisticated nature of the materials are properly met.”
“When the customers come to us, they know we are one of the few that can commit to a date and get them the valves of the highest quality with the sophisticated metallurgical requirements,” says Nuggihalli.
Contrary to a negative stigma which many companies manufacturing in the Middle East receive, Pentair is able to provide a uniform quality of service across the world. “They get the same quality of treatment anywhere in the world, and beyond that,” says Nuggihalli.
This also includes other parts of the Gulf, including Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia is one where we think there is room for us to have a bigger presence than just a sales office because the market is so huge, we’d like to have service centres closer to our customers,” he says.
Herein lies the largest challenge that Pentair faces, but it’s a challenge that has been brought about by its ambition. “Pentair is still relatively unknown in the local market place,” reveals Nuggihalli.
“Customers don’t know that we manufacture products in the region and think that we only import into the region, but I think that it’s important
Article continues on next page …
33 Hyundai E&C
Another top ten entry for South Korea comes in the form of Hyundai E&C. The building arm of the former Hyundai Group conglomerate (separate from Hyundai Heavy Industries) has had a storming 2013 in the region, capped with a massive order in April 2013 for the UAE’s ADMA-OPCO.
The $1.9 billion mega-contract was awarded for the construction of “SARB-4,” an offshore crude oil and gas processing project. The SARB (Satah Al- Razboot) offshore crude oil and gas processing project involves the construction of facilities to transfer oil drilled on 86 wells of the Satah Al-Razboot offshore oil field, 120 kilometers northwest of Abu Dhabi.
Facilities related to collection and transport will be constructed on two artificial islands. In addition, Hyundai E&C will build a facility in Zirku Island to separate gas from crude oil collected in the SARB and Umm Al Lulu oil fields.
The oil and gas processing facility to be constructed in Zirku Island has a design capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil per day, and 35 million cubic feet of gas. The South Korean EPC specialist is nearing completion of a $1.4 billion pipeline project in Kuwait for Kuwait Oil Company, which is expected to be handed over this summer.
Hyundai E&C announced on April 26 2013 that in the first three months of this year, its consolidated sales rose to 5.8% to $2.5 billion.
Article continues on next page …
34 McDermott International
Building on a hugely respected pedigree of project work spanning some of the Middle East region’s most prestigious and productive offshore environments, McDermott International has continued to grow its regional project base over the last eighteen months.
The company signed off 2012 with a massive pair of orders for an undisclosed customer in the Arabian Gulf with a combined value of approximately $900 million at the very end of the year.
The company has also been busy carrying out a major EPC project for Al-Khafji Joint Operations, in the Hout field in the Neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia throughout much of 2012.
The KJO project comprised more than 600 tonnes of structures including a tripod jacket, deck and flare tower and 42 kilometers of 24-inch subsea pipeline. McDermott also carried out modifications to a number of existing platforms in the Hout field, through its brownfield division in Jebel Ali, Dubai. Project completion is expected in 3Q 2015.
McDermott’s revenues were $807.5 million for the first quarter 2013, an increase of 11 percent compared to $727.7 million in the corresponding period of 2012. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to an approximately $48.6 million increase in revenues in the Atlantic segment, coupled with increased revenues in the Middle East.
For the year ended December 31, 2012, McDermott reported revenues of $3.6 billion, with operating income of $319.3 million and net income of $206.7 million.
Article continues on next page …
35 JGC CORP
Japan’s JGC Corporation has been busy throughout the region on a multitude of major projects for the Middle East region’s leading National Oil Companies and the region remains one of the companies most important and dynamic markets.
A recent major award was signed off in November 2012, when the firm announced it had been awarded the LSTK contract from Saudi Aramco for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services associated for the Jazan Refinery and Terminal.
Jazan Refinery and Terminal, to be built in the province of Jazan, located in the southeast area of Saudi Arabia, is expected to have 400,000 barrels per day capacity and is scheduled for completion in 2016.
JGC was among seven international firms selected by Iraq to bid for the development of its Nassiriya oilfield and building a refinery earlier this year.
JGC’s other flagship project in the region is Qatar’s Barzan Gas Project. Japan’s JGC is responsible for the onshore packages being built north east of Ras Laffan.
Barzan Train one is planned come on stream in 2014, with Train two following in 2015.
Article continues on next page …
36 KENTZ
Kentz had impressive forward momentum in the regional project arena throughout 2013.
Alongside its partners Ali Khudair Al-Harbi and Ahmed Omar Radi Engineering Consultancy (RGC) Kentz was awarded a major technical services contract by the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in April this last year.
This contract, which lasts for five years, includes engineering works for electricity facilities for King Fahd Industrial Port and Jubail Port.
In December 2012 Kentz confirmed the award of three individual, reimbursable, service contracts in Iraq with a total value to Kentz of $55 million.
Across the three projects, Kentz will provide services over the next three to four years that will oversee the development of in-plant process facilities to deliver a combined increase in production capacity of approximately 250,000 bpd of oil and 300 mscf of gas.
Kentz will be working on both new and existing upstream facilities, based in the Basra and Baghdad areas.
Its full year financial report for 2012 showed revenue up 6% to $1.56 billion and a $2.57 billion backlog.
Article continues on next page …
37 Bechtel
A steady performer, Bechtel maintains its top 12 position thanks to its mega-projects being undertaken in Saudi Arabia. Bechtel has managed the Jubail project, located in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, since it began in the mid-1970s.
In 2004, the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu asked the company to manage Jubail II, a $3.8 billion expansion of the city’s industrial and residential areas.
Jubail Industrial City is the largest civil engineering project in the world today. It also is one of Bechtel’s most remarkable achievements—a city built from the ground up, requiring vast resources and logistical planning on an unprecedented scale.
With a population of more than 100,000, Jubail today accounts for more than 7 percent of the Kingdom’s gross domestic product. The city has evolved into a major player in the global petrochemicals market.
In the UAE, Bechtel is best known for its project work on the Khalifa Port and Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad) in Abu Dhabi, a complex on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest combined port and industrial zone developments.
Last year Bechtel celebrated its 50th anniversary of working in the UAE. Its first project, in 1962, was the Murban oil field development, and more recently it has worked on the Borouge petrochemical complex. Since 1962, Bechtel has completed more than 100 projects in the UAE.
Article continues on next page …
38 Maire Tecnimont
With a strong revenue stream in 2012 coming from technical services, Maire Tecnimont proved it hadn’t taken its eye off the EPC ball with a major project win in Saudi Arabia.
Announced last summer, the Maire Tecnimont Group has been awarded through its subsidiaries, Tecnimont and Tecnimont Arabia Limited, engineering, procurement and construction contracts on a Lump Sum Turn Key basis for the implementation of a manufacturing plant in Jubail for Sadara Chemical Company, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and The Dow Chemical Company. Completion is expected by the end of 2014.
Oil, gas and petrochemical project work accounted for almost 60% of the company’s backlog at the end of March this year. The backlog of OGP work at 31 March 2013 is equal to $4.02 billion.
Technimont is also a lead contractor on the $4.7 billion Habshan Five project in Abu Dhabi, part of the giant integrated gas development (IGD) project being carried out by GASCO. The project broke ground in 2009 and is was scheduled for completion in October 2013.
Article continues on next page …
39 Foster Wheeler
Foster Wheeer boosted its project portfolio in Kuwait, Egypt and Qatar in 2012-2013, and Middle Eastern work now accounts for over 30% of its international backlog. In September 2012 Amec and Foster Wheeler were reprted to have been selected for both Kuwait’s $14.2bn Al-Zour refinery and its $16.3bn clean fuel project on a consultancy basis.
Last year the firm were also able to confirm Shell had awarded a basic engineering package for a world-scale MEG facility at Ras Laffan, in Qatar.
The MEG facility will be part of a new petrochemicals complex in Ras Laffan being developed by a QP and Shell JV.
Outside of the GCC, a subsidiary of Swiss-headquartered EPC giant Foster Wheeler also signed a three-year framework agreement with Apache’s joint venture company in Egypt. for the development and implementation of a range of upstream projects in Egypt.
Foster Wheeler reported three record-setting performance milestones as in 2012: $2.4 billion in scope new orders; $2.2 billion in scope backlog; and 17 mn man-hours in backlog.
Article continues on next page …
40 Chiyoda Corporation
By far the largest announcement of the past year for Japan’s Chiyoda Corporation has been the awards to its joint venture with Taiwanese CTCI Corporation for the Engineering, Procurement, Supply, Construction and Commissioning (EPSCC) of the $1.5bn Laffan Refinery 2 (LR 2) Project in Qatar.
LR2 will have a daily production capacity of 60,000 barrels of naphtha, 53,000 barrels of jet fuel, 24,000 barrels of gasoil and 9,000 barrels of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Laffan Refinery 2 is expected to be fully operational by the third quarter of 2016.
In March the company made clear its intention to boost its Middle Eastern workload with the creation of a joint venture company in conjunction with Consolidated Contractors Company.
The name of the company is Chiyoda CCC Engineering Limited (CCEL) having its regional headquarters in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The JV will operate an engineering company targeting certain hydrocarbon processing industries specifically within the Middle East.
In late 2012 its JV operation with CB&I was awarded the FEED contract for an onshore natural gas liquefaction facility project in Mozambique, Southern Africa.
