Engineering news
The contract is to provide engineering, procurement support and project management services for pre-FEED (front end engineering and design) and FEED work across a range of projects.
The scope of services for the contract covers onshore, offshore, subsea, drilling, greenfield and brownfield upstream engineering services in Alaska, Angola, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Oman, Trinidad and the UK.
The contract has an option to extend for two additional years.
“This global framework reinforces Amec Foster Wheeler’s long-term relationship with BP, allowing global access to our expertise and technology,” said John Pearson, the company’s president of oil, gas & chemicals.
Amec is currently the subject of a £2.2 billion takeover bid by rival Wood Group, who has also announced a new contract win.
The Aberdeen-based company has been awarded a multi-year contract from Karoon Petróleo & Gás to provide engineering services to support the full field development for the Echidna field offshore Brazil.
The contract, the first between the two companies, will be executed by Wood Group’s Rio de Janeiro office focusing on the technical requirements of a floating production unit (FPU) and subsea structures. The equipped FPU will be located in the Echidna field within the Santos Basin and moored in a maximum water depth of 400m.
“Our ability to deliver local world-class design capabilities with a range of available tools and software made Wood Group a partner of choice for the field development project,” said Hugues Corrignan, managing director of Wood Group Brazil’s office.
Meanwhile, Wood Group revealed that its takeover of Amec could result result in annual savings of £150 million by its third year as a merged group, up from the £110 million savings it predicted when it made its all-share offer in March.
Wood Group confirmed that a one-off cost saving of £190 million could be made in the first year of merging the companies.
The savings will be possible by using economies of scale to drive down overall costs while streamlining corporate and administrative operations to cut duplication.
Wood said it believed greater savings could still be revealed.
The better than expected forecasts cheered investors who are waiting to receive full details of the takeover plans by the end of May before a shareholder vote in early June.
However, Wood Group will still need to convince regulators that the new group’s combined 60% share of the North Sea market will not pose a threat to competition, or hit the suffering sector with thousands more job losses.
The UK’s largest union Unite has repeated its calls for transparency on jobs following the takeover. The union said it has met with Wood and asked them specifically about the possible impact, but has not been given details of the company’s plans on jobs.
“It is incredibly disappointing that the company are making public statements about efficiency savings, without first speaking to workers and their representatives about what that means,” said Unite regional officer John Boland. “We need full transparency and consultation over any future changes that will affect staff.”