Oilfield technology company Plexus Holdings is on the brink of a major breakthrough in the global subsea industry, bosses said yesterday.
Engineering and testing stages for its new subsea wellhead system are well advanced and the firm is preparing to take on the main players who currently dominate the market.
Craig Hendrie and Graham Stevens, technical and finance director respectively, also highlighted the firm’s progress in adapting its innovative Pos-Grip technology for use in high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) exploration well tiebacks.
In addition, they gave an update on plans to expand the north-east business in Asia and Russia.
The pair were speaking during a site visit by investment market analysts and journalists to Plexus’s growing operational headquarters in Dyce, Aberdeen.
Plexus supplies equipment for exploration and production applications globally.
Its Pos-Grip technology can best be described as a grip-and-squeeze system of wellhead engineering – applying pressure to seal part of the well structure from the outside – which has been used in more than 300 wells globally by the likes of BG, BHP Billiton, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Tullow Oil, and Wintershall.
The firm nearly doubled the size of its facilities at Dyce last year in a £2.4million investment as it gears up for diversification from surface wellheads into a subsea market worth billions of pounds.
Premises previously occupied by US-based oilfield service company Baker Hughes are now part of the Plexus operation, which employs 150 people in Aberdeen and 10 elsewhere.
The move into subsea work is being done through a joint industry partnership with Shell, Total, BG Group, Maersk, Wintershall, Tullow Oil, Eni, Breda, Senergy, Oil States and Transocean.
Mr Hendrie said subsea wellhead technology had been in the spotlight since the catastrophic Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and oil firms were keen to find a viable alternative to the “relatively similar” systems currently available.
He added: “After Macondo, companies started looking at this a lot more closely.
“We spoke to Shell, Maersk and Total, who are all users and lovers of our surface products, and they said they would like to have a subsea version of our system.
“Just a few months after Macondo, the joint industry project was initiated.”
The system testing stage is nearing its end, Mr Hendrie said, adding: “We have starting to campaign for a field trial. The target is to install one of these in this calendar year.”
More than 400 subsea wells are being drilled every year in a market worth billions of pounds, and Mr Hendrie said Plexus aimed to challenge the current suppliers – four US-well based suppliers and Norway’s Aker Solutions – for a slice of it.
According to Plexus, its technology can shave days of drilling projects, saving customers vast amounts of money in rig rates.
The company, whose export sales in its last financial year accounted for 63% of turnover, is also focused on growth in Asia through a new “mini-Aberdeen” hub in Singapore.
Mr Stevens revealed the firm is also targeting Russia for new business in a market that was, until the recent trade sanctions, dominated by US companies.
Mr Stevens, who is heading off to Moscow on a business trip this weekend, said: “To be able to talk to them with reference to business in the future – well we feel now is a good time to be doing it.
“Sometimes the best time to make friends and form relationships is when everyone else is running in the opposite direction.”
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