Page 22: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jan/Feb 2024)

21 23

INTERVIEW MATT TREMBLAY, ABS

T Q : hree uesTions

MATT

TREMBLAY,

VP, Global Offshore

Markets, ABS

The American Bureau of Shipping dominates the global market in the classifcation of Floating Production. Offshore Engineer recently sat with Matt Tremblay, ABS’ Vice President of Global

Offshore Markets, at American Bureau of Shipping HQ in

Houston for his insights on market drivers and technical trends in this dynamic market.

By Greg Trauthwein

Matt, big picture, how do you see the Float- one FPSO. The number of shipyards and EPC companies ing Production market developing in the com- capable of handling the large FPSO projects is a small list. ing years?

At a macro level, I think we're going to be supply lim- Can you put in perspective the importance of ited over the next fve years. While there is a demand for floating production to ABS as a whole? increasing capacity, there is no capacity to [expand imme- The foating production market is the cornerstone of diately] based on the supply chain of shipyards and equip- ABS’ leading position in the offshore side of classifcation. ment manufacturers. The other challenge is fnancing, as ABS classes almost 38% of the global offshore production the cost of capital is signifcantly higher than it was during feet, more than 50% of [the feet] in the Americas, where the last boom. Another thing that's challenging the capac- South America is the central focus of the world right now ity side of things is the activity in the marine market, as on offshore production. ABS is class more than 50% of per square meter, a dry dock is going to make more money that feet in South America and 100% of the new activity building six gas carriers [for example] than it will building in Guyana. 22 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM