International energy service company John Wood Group said yesterday it remained confident in the medium and longer-term fundamentals of its key markets.
It said it was continuing to develop its business to ensure it was well positioned to deliver good growth as energy market activity recovered.
The Aberdeen-based group said it had continued to benefit from a robust performance by its production support business and it believed 2009 earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation would be in line with market expectations.
It said that in its development-related engineering activities, subsea and pipelines had performed well and remained active on several major subsea projects.
As anticipated, however, project delays in upstream and downstream had reduced volumes and margins and this trend looked set to continue into next year, Wood Group added.
It said that with a good prospect list, it believed activity should begin to recover in the second half of 2010.
Wood Group said production facilities had seen a strong performance this year, including good activity in the North Sea supporting a broad range of customers.
It said: “Internationally we are developing our presence in Australia, west Africa and Brazil, and following our acquisition of Baker Energy are now the leading provider of operations support in the Gulf of Mexico, including deepwater facilities. In well support, our electric submersible pumps business is making good progress in developing its international activities in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“The US rig count is now recovering and this should provide positive momentum for our pressure-control activities into 2010. We have also made good progress in developing pressure-control business internationally, with recent success in Mexico and the Middle East. Overall, the performance of the division has benefited from the early implementation of signific-ant cost-reduction measures.
“In gas-turbine services, we continue to see reasonable demand for our aftermarket services in both oil and gas and power and industrial applications and we have been successful in winning a range of longer-term contracts.
“We continue to see delays in the award of fast-track power projects, but expect awards to begin in 2010, which should provide good growth in 2011.
“We have recently strengthened our offering by acquiring Shanahan, a leading provider of power-plant installation, commissioning and maintenance services in the eastern hemisphere.
“Our financial position remains strong and we will deliver good operating cash flow for the year.”
