UK yard plans new base in India

The South Tyneside engineering company McNulty is planning to open a shipyard in India. The McNulty yard in the UK has been building oil rigs and floating oil production vessels for about 20 years but, now that the North Sea oil is running out, the company wants to open its first-ever foreign base to tap into the developing Asian oilfields.

Managing director Steve Keyworth has pledged to keep winning orders for the South Shields??? yard and claims the expansion into India will help secure employment for the workforce. Union leaders have backed the move which comes at a time of peaks and troughs, with the South Shields workforce ranging from 1,600 to the current level of about 300.

The yard has already been tipped to win a major share of work on the two aircraft carriers ordered by the Royal Navy and an announcement is due in the next few weeks. Keyworth will be flying to India to meet managers at a shipyard to discuss McNulty’s using the yard to build rigs and floating oil production vessels for the oil and gas fields being opened up in the Indian Ocean. Declining to name the yard, he said: ???We are in advanced negotiations with an Indian shipyard to export McNulty’s offshore skills into the Indian offshore market. The obvious advantage is that we will have a shipyard in India, and they will be able to turn themselves into an offshore facility. We will also use this yard as a stepping stone to get into the Far East market ??” including China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia.??

The yard in India would create opportunities for skilled offshore workers and management on the Tyne and create opportunities for them in India. A union spokesman said ???There won’t be any threat to jobs in North East England because there’s going to be work from the aircraft carriers. There’s going to be a massive skills shortage unless we start training people and getting more apprentices.??

Workers at the South Shields yard are currently busy upgrading the ???Northern Producer???.

Meanwhile, the company is also bidding for a number of contracts, including work to supply equipment for massive oil fields in Alberta, Canada.