Petrofac said yesterday it had made a good start to 2010 and was confident this would be another year of strong growth.
The global provider of facility services to the oil and gas industry said that it was performing in line with expectations, had an order backlog of £4.9billion at the end of April and a cash balance of more than £800million.
Chief executive Ayman Asfari said: “Following our record order intake in 2009, the business is delivering on our broader portfolio of existing contracts and our backlog gives us outstanding revenue visibility for the current year and beyond.
“We continue to invest in our people and our business infrastructure, prioritising sustained excellence in our project execution.
“Our differentiated offering, focus on major hydrocarbon regions where significant expenditures are expected and strong bidding pipeline gives me confidence in the group’s opportunities for continued growth.”
Petrofac said that in engineering and construction it was working on 10 large engineering, procurement and construction projects in seven countries, including Syria, Turkmenistan and Qatar and was continuing to bid in both core markets and selectively in new but adjacent markets such as Iraq.
In offshore engineering and operations, it said it was seeing an improving market and had now begun work on two major contracts awarded in the second half of 2009 by Apache and BP.
In the year to date, Petrofac has secured contract extensions with Britannia, worth about £35million over five years, and also with BHP Billiton.
Its engineering, training service and production solutions division, however, is continuing to experience subdued activity levels.
Petrofac also said that in early April it completed the sale of its energy-development division’s West Don and Don South-west oil fields north-east of Shetland and the subsequent demerger of EnQuest. The company said it anticipated that the Don assets would contribute trading profits for the period from January 1 to the demerger of about £1.34million in addition to a capital gain of more than £67million.
FTSE 100-listed Petrofac, which has more than 11,700 employees, operates out of five main centres, in Aberdeen, Sharjah, Woking, Chennai and Mumbai and a further 19 offices worldwide.
Oil prices fell yesterday as high US inventory levels and the slumping euro helped to keep pressure on demand.
In New York, June delivery crude settled down $1.25 at $74.40 a barrel, while June Brent crude in London fell $1.09 to $80.11. The Brent June contract expires today.
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