Petrofac, the international provider of facility services to the oil and gas production and processing industry, expressed confidence in its outlook yesterday.
Ayman Asfari, Petrofac’s chief executive, said after the company reported figures for last year: “Overall, 2009 was another excellent year.
“We have delivered record results and a record order intake, which gives us outstanding revenue visibility for the current year and beyond.
“While 2009 was a challenging year for our industry, we were successful in growing our capacity and capability, investing in both our people and our systems, to ensure that we maintain our focus on strong operational performance.
“We remain well positioned to benefit from ongoing investment in oil and gas projects by our key customers in our core markets, which we believe will underpin strong growth in our business in 2010 and over the medium-term.”
Petrofac said it had achieved an order intake in 2008 of £4.87billion, up from £1.93billion the year before, and at December 31 had an order backlog of £5.4billion compared with a backlog of £2.66billion a year earlier.
Chief finance officer Keith Roberts said the company had identified more than £133billion of projects which the company expected to come up for tender in the next three years, principally in the Middle East and north Africa.
He added that the North Sea remained an active place for Petrofac, which has one of its five major global offices in Aberdeen.
Mr Roberts said the company’s offshore engineering and operations division had at the end of last year secured two major contracts with Apache and BP and was currently actively bidding for other contracts. The three-year Apache deal is valued at £75million and involves providing engineering and construction services on the Forties field.
The five-year BP contract, valued at £100million, will cover integrated maintenance management support services for all of BP’s UK offshore assets and its onshore Dimlington gas terminal on Humberside.
Petrofac said that during the year it had grown its global workforce from 11,100 to 11,700, with most of the growth coming in India and Indonesia.
It added that the BP and Apache deals should see it increase headcount in the UK.
Mr Asfari said Petrofac regarded the North Sea as a centre of excellence for its business and it could leverage the skills and competency gained there to win work elsewhere in the world.
Petrofac reported forecast-beating net profits of £235.7million for 2009, up 34% on the year before.
Revenues was up 10% to £2.43billion. The company also said it had gross cash balances at December 31 of £933million, double its cash a year earlier.
Last week, Petrofac announced its intention to demerge its West Don and Don Southwest oil assets, which are to be combined with the assets of Lundin UK in new company EnQuest, which will be listed in London.
Petrofac said yesterday this was the first major demonstration of its Energy Developments division’s “build and harvest” strategy.
Petrofac shares added more than 4% at £11.16.
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