Page 29: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jan/Feb 2023)

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Overall, orders for production ?oaters have returned to stage. It’s like old friends disappearing!” historic pace and a large backlog of deep water projects McCaul said that the market had been in literal freefall has developed. More than 200 projects in the planning since 2016 “when the Saudis decided to put all the Ameri- stage are likely to require a ?oating production system for can tight oil people out of business by driving the price of ?eld development over the coming decade, according to oil down and starving them from revenue. It didn’t work, the IMA/WER report, and the backlog includes about 60 but the investment in the sector really began to fall off. Just projects requiring an FPSO within the next ?ve years. as it was beginning to hum again, along came COVID and that knocked the business for a loop again.”

Along the way, orders for ?oating production units have

RIDING THE ROLLERCOASTER

Like the offshore oil and gas business itself, the market swung wildly, from up to 20 one year, down to zero the next.

for ?oating production systems – projects that can easily “In 2021 we began to recover; ‘22 was a very good year exceed $10 billion, with the FPSO alone costing $2.5-$3 [with orders for 11 FPSOs and FPUs combined]; ‘23 [and billion – has endured its fair share of high and lows over the foreseeable future] looks wonderful.” the past generation. While the value of a single FPSO contract [$2.5-$3B] “I’ve watched this business grow from something like 60 is astronomical in traditional commercial shipbuilding

FPSOs up to close to 200 today,” said McCaul. “A lot of contract terms, McCaul noted that further growth in ’22 the [original] 60 are already gone, I’ve seen them come and was muted by a capacity problem – both in terms of hu- go from the planning stage to the development stage to the man capital to effectively bid and manage a multi-billion, installation stage to the decommissioning and scrapping multi-year projects, plus a physical limitation in the num- january/february 2023 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 29