Wuchang targets offshore vessels

The company, with two yards in Wuhan and Qingdao cities, is in advanced talks with ship brokers in Singapore for contracts to build up to eight anchor handling tug supply vessels.

A company official said Wuchang has submitted its price indications for these contracts and is confident it will secure at least three of them.

Wuchang already has two existing orders for a pair of AHTS vessels being built for China Oilfield Services (COSL). The official said the two units, intended for support services on deepwater exploration and development by China National Offshore Oil Corporation, will be delivered in March and June 2011 respectively.

The yard is also bidding for a contract from McDermott to build a deep-water pipelay vessel for operation in the Gulf of Mexico. Bids are due to be handed in next month, after a minor extension was granted to the original late-March deadline. Wuchang has also teamed up with Chinese shipbuilder Yantai Raffles on the latter’s bid to build Dutch marine contractor Allseas’ gigantic platform and pipeline installation vessel Pieter Schelte.

Bids were submitted for that contract on 5 March and the Dutch contractor is expected to place an award in the second quarter. Allseas is said to be targeting delivery of the prototype vessel, with an anticipated price tag of more than $1 billion, late in 2013.

Along with Yantai Raffles, seven other yards are also thought to be bidding the job. They are the South Korean trio of Daewoo, Samsung and STX, plus the Chinese builders Cosco Shipyard, Qingdao Beihai Shipyard, Jiangsu Rongsheng and Jiangsu Eastern.

Finally, Wuchang is part of a consortium with its joint venture partner McDermott bidding for a contract from Japanese independent Inpex for a floating production, storage and offloading vessel. Inpex will start a yard inspection at Wuchang next month as part of its pre-qualifying exercise, a company official said. The newbuild is designed to be 350m in length and to handle up to 85,000 barrels per day of condensate and store 1.2 million barrels.

Wuchang established a joint venture with McDermott in 2008 in Qingdao city to target offshore projects. Qingdao McDermott Wuchang Offshore Engineering is now building a yard in Qingdao for fabricating floaters, semi-submersible rigs and jack-ups.