UK Fabricators to Compete with the World’s Best

The first central North Sea platform to be built at a single construction yard in the UK for at least 25 years has been completed by British manufacturer OGN on Tyneside.

The final part of the fabrication, the topside (deck), will be towed down the Tyne to the North Sea Forties Field, 110 miles off Aberdeen. It is part of a £400 million construction project for US oil and gas exploration and production company, Apache Corporation.

First oil from the new Forties Alpha Satellite Platform (FASP) is expected to come on stream in the autumn of this year and has the capacity to produce up to 25,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). Decommissioning of the Forties Field had been due to commence in 2013 but the life of the field has been extended by another 20 years.

The contract for the design and build of the platform was awarded to OGN in 2010 and the project, from concept to completion, has required over 3 million man hours of work, providing 2,000 jobs at OGN’s Hadrian Yard at Wallsend and a further estimated 5,000 jobs throughout the British supply chain. The completion of FASP also marks the 10th anniversary of Apache’s acquisition of the iconic Forties Field from BP. It was the first of the UK’s large oil fields, discovered in 1970 and officially inaugurated by The Queen in 1975.

However, this British manufacturing success story is coupled with a caution from the UK oil and gas fabrication sector which is increasingly losing business to South Korea and the Middle East. OGN estimates that, over the past three years, major contracts for UK Continental Shelf oil and gas activity to the value of more than £10 billion have been awarded outside the UK, equating to over 10,000 jobs.

The perception that the UK no longer has the capacity and skills to take on projects of this size and scale has been comprehensively disproved by OGN which was established only four years ago when it acquired Hadrian Yard and invested £25 million in the region.

[mappress]

Press Release, May 30, 2013