SINGAPORE - Mainboard-listed Swiber Holdings said on Thursday that is has clinched US$405.6 million (S$555.97 million) in contracts, including a US$333 million award for Engineering, Procurement, Installation and Construction (EPIC) services in India.
The contract in India is the second awarded to Swiber by the same national oil company in just over a month. The project, to commence immediately, involves transportation and installation of submarine pipelines and engineering works and modification of existing facilities. Phase 1 is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2016 and Phase 2, the second quarter of 2017.
Swiber also won in recent months a few other smaller contracts for mooring, jack-up installation and offshore pipeline and subsea work, in the Asia Pacific region.
The awards boost the group's order book to a record over US$1.8 billion to-date, including a US$710 million offshore field development project in West Africa last December and the US$310 million contract from the same Indian national oil company last month.
Swiber is filling up its order book amid a more challenging market in the last six months. The precipitous fall in oil price since June 2014 has led to oil majors cutting back in the capital expenditure for exploration and production.
Said group chief executive officer Francis Wong: "We are pleased to have clinched another major project from the same client in India....Going into the tender, we exercised stringent cost analysis and took into consideration the inhouse and shared resources within the group. We were confident that our strategy of investing in a suite of marine assets and our ability to integrate our offshore Epic and offshore marine services, would give us competitive advantage over bidders who did not own their own assets."
Swiber owns a young and modern fleet of 13 construction vessels supported by its in-house offshore support vessels.
The new contract in India is expected to start contributing to the group's earnings in the second quarter ending June 30, 2015.
Mr Wong said Swiber will continue to mitigate market pressures by maximising usage of its vessels and equipment, negotiating with suppliers to greater advantage, monitoring debt, reining in cash collection, and cutting costs.
