Speedy International Asset Services has grown from being a pure equipment hire firm, to one that offers full management and consultancy services to complement its rental business. Georgina Enzer speaks to Richard barber to find out more.
Speedy International Asset Services deals in integrated management solutions, in terms of the oil and gas industry. Speedy helps companies from end-to-end from logistics to equipment rental, through to manpower. OGME met with Richard Barber, oil & gas services director, MENA, Speedy International to find out how they are faring in 2013.
How would you describe your company to someone who has never heard of it?
I think the best example of what we do is through the UZ750 project. On UZ750 we are providing ZADCO with all their logistics support from cranes and trucks, to labour.
We handle all of their stevedoring, which is offloading all their vessels, and we support the drill pad. We then support NDC of Abu Dhabi on the drill pipe with supersuckers for taking mud away, and delivering pipes for the oil, for example.
We have a whole package approach that we developed specifically for the ZADCO Project and that is probably the best example of our integrated approach to oil and gas. The other side of it is our general rental business, where we provide anything from a compressor to nitrogen producing units.
We are also very specialised in pipeline work, we do a lot of work outside of the UAE and throughout Asia Pacific, up into the Russian states with our nitrogen units and our big compressed air units. So, I suppose we are an equipment rental company with a big twist.
We revolutionise the firm from a pure equipment rental company to now actually offering solutions and a more holistic approach.
We are working with Qatar Petroleum and one or two of the other state oil companies by just looking at the specific problems they have and what we can do to help them with their problems.
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How has 2013 been for you?
It has been a good year; we have seen a lot of activity both in terms of orders and enquiries. I think the infrastructure sector is currently quiet, we do quite a lot of infrastructure projects but the oil and gas sector is really rolling on from a few of the big projects that started 18 months ago.
In the UAE, we are seeing a lot of demand for our services. We also recently started a business in Kazakhstan which is going really well and we are also working with Chevron. We want to focus on oil and gas.
What big customer and clients are you working with this year?
ZADCO is probably one of our biggest clients in the region. We are working with a lot of the sub contractors in tier 1 within the UZ750 project and we are also working specifically with a lot of the Korean companies within the O&G fields building the new plants. They are our key tier one client base, and then we have a whole myriad of tier 2 and 3 customers that we work with on a regular basis.
What are the new/ongoing trends on your sector going forward?
I think we are starting to see more companies looking to move away from pure rental and to look for a service offering, they are looking to us to provide an operator with a machine, put a maintenance team on site etc. and looking to wrap more of their problems round us.
We are trying to do more than just rent out a machine, we will operate it, maintain it, replace it (if necessary) but we will also report the productivity, the utilisation and tie in those KPIs. So, we have a whole suite of reporting that sits behind our bigger projects, which gives clients that comfort factor.
Where are you seeing the most growth in the region for Speedy?
I think the UAE at the moment with the investment that is going on particularly into the island projects UZ750, ADNOC are also starting out there with two islands and we are seeing a lot of demand, not only for ZADCO and ADNOC and also from their customer base.
We are starting to see pick up now in Qatar and we are seeing a lot of interest in Oman in our oilfield services offering. Kazakhstan is very busy, but that is an established oil field and we are really in there for Chevron doing all the shut downs and the maintenance, so that is steady steam and it fluctuates with the shut downs.
We have started to look at Iraq, we have our first 20 megawatt power plant in Iraq working with one of the Russian oil majors, so Iraq is very busy with a lot of opportunity.
As a company we are just stepping into Iraq and picking the right customers and the right project.
