The chief of floating production specialist SBM Offshore has signalled an upturn in activity, with projects that were previously subject to delay now finally on the move again.

Bruno Chabas, CEO, said operators are accelerating projects again after holding back on tendering up until now. “Over the past year we have seen our clients delaying the award of their projects, pushing their dates to later 2014 or 2015. So there are a number of projects that have been in the pipeline for a period of time, which are now fully in the active tendering stage,” he said.

He was speaking as SBM’s first-quarter results were released, and responding to questions from analysts about the state of the floating production market and the progress the company is making on tendering activity.

While Chabas stuck to his guns and confirmed that the company would not comment on individual projects—a policy SBM has struck to for the last two and a half years—he did flag up just how far and fast the market is now moving.

“On top of this there is also an acceleration of new projects coming into pre-FEED or initial evaluation phase, and also coming into the pipeline,” he said. “So the net effect of this, I believe, is going to be a strong demand for FPSO products, but this strong demand will not materialise before 2015, or toward the end of 2014,” he clarified.

When pressed on the size of the project pipeline that SBM sees coming through to the tendering stage, and the progress of these developments, Chabas went on: “SBM has always been in the medium size and high end of the market for converted FPSOs, so when I talk about the tendering activity I am only speaking about that market segment,” he cautioned, continuing: “....and what we are seeing is that we have a number of tenders in-house either in the final phase of negotiation or in the initial tendering phase. The number of tenders that we have in-house is the highest we have ever seen. And that really is [due] to a combination of factors—because the projects have been delayed and there really are a number of opportunities.”

Comparing the current market to how it was seen by SBM earlier this year, Chabas went on, “If I compare this with February, with the exception of one project in Angola, no project has been awarded but the backlog of tenders has increased in-house.”

Offshore