Technip receives US platform order

The Technip Offshore Finland yard in Pori’s Mäntyluoto on the west coast of Finland has been awarded an oilrig engineering, procurement, and construction contract worth $273 million by the American oil company Chevron. The Pori yard will deliver the hull and mooring systems for a drilling platform to be used in a Chevron deepwater oil production project in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Pori yard employs 650 workers, 300 of who are currently temporarily laid off but will be able to return back to work by the end of the year. Furthermore, the company plans to hire an additional 200 workers for the project, which will provide work for yet another 200 people through subcontracting deals.

The hull of the drilling rig is scheduled for completion in mid-2007 and will be approximately 170 metres long, with a breadth of 39 metres. Moored to the seabed and floating in a vertical position, the hull will support the topside modules scheduled for later installation and will include the drilling and oil pumping technology plus the crew accommodation facilities.

The Mäntyluoto yard’s previous large order came in the spring of 2004, when another American oil giant, Kerr-McGee, ordered a platform hull priced at over EUR 100 million.

The market for Mäntyluoto’s floating, patented Spar hulls designed for deepwater oil production is susceptible to fierce business fluctuations.

The yard has also been the subject of a hectic ownership shuffle, being originally the offshore unit of Rauma-Repola and, later, becoming part of the Rauma Group. The Norwegian company Aker Maritime purchased the yard in 1995, after which it was passed on to the French firm Coflexip. A business merger put the French oil technology engineering and construction company Technip into the role of the yard’s present owner.