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Pipeline Review
Opportunities in the Middle East
pipeline market Neale Carter, executive vice president for Middle East, Africa & Asia Pacific, Penspen, and Angus Bowie, director for MENA & APAC at STATS Group, spoke to Oil Review Middle East about pipeline prospects in the region.
Angus Bowie (AB): The low oil price and COVID-19 has naturally impacted on the oil and gas sector internationally, leading to some project postponements, but, in the Middle East, STATS Group sees a lot of potential and we are engaged in a number of live pipeline workscopes. We are working on major pipeline rerouting projects in Saudi Arabia and maintenance projects in UAE, Oman and Qatar. STATS is in the fortunate position of growing our market share in pipeline isolation, particularly intervention projects, which is more than offsetting the reduction in the overall market for our services. 14
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Issue 5 2020
The STATS Group hot tapping machine in action in the Middle East.
Image Credit : STATS Group
How do you view the Middle East market for pipeline development, and are there any projects or contracts you would like to highlight? Neale Carter (NC): A number of upstream oil and gas megaprojects are being delayed by Middle East national oil companies (NOCs) due to the impact on oil demand as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic. With crude oil prices set to remain under pressure throughout 2020, we have seen the cancellation and delay of a number of greenfield projects, with NOCs preferring to focus spend on brownfield refurbishment and modification projects to maintain current production capacity. In the UAE, ADNOC are continuing with brownfield investment in both offshore (Upper Zakum expansion project to increase production to one million bpd) requiring new subsea pipelines, and onshore (BAB and Al-Dabbiya facilities expansion), which will generate a number of new well tie-in opportunities, requiring new flowlines and pipelines. There are a number of major pipeline projects that we expect to move towards Final Investment Decision (FID) in the Middle East once oil demand returns to pre-pandemic levels. There will be new pipeline opportunities generated from ADNOC’s Hail & Ghasha Development (HGD) projects, and we expect the long-awaited Iraq-Jordan Export Pipeline project, and the Iraqi Common Seawater Supply project to finally move to FID.
How are you looking to develop your business in the region? NC: We are looking to broaden our range of capabilities in the Middle East to include
There are a number of major pipeline projects we expect to move towards FID once oil demand returns to pre-pandemic levels.”
the downstream and renewables market sectors where we see continued growth in capital investment. The integrity of existing assets is very important to our clients in the region, and the ability to both predict potential failures and optimise maintenance activities to reduce operational expenditure (OPEX) costs is becoming critical for asset owners given the challenging market conditions. We see the launch of our new digital integrity platform, THEIA, as an important addition to our integrity toolkit for the market. Embracing the future of digital to benefit our clients is part of our commitment to being thought leaders in the integrity space.
