Bruised Asian Shipyards Prepare for Eventual Market Upswing

"This is an opportune and strategic acquisition as it will not only broaden our suite of jackup design offerings in this highly competitive sector, but also provide us with enhanced capabilities to service customers through the provision of expanded aftermarket sales and services," Chow Yew Yuen, CEO of Keppel O&M, said.

"With the current low oil price, we have seen a slowdown in newbuild rig orders. Rig owners are instead looking at repairing and upgrading their current fleet. We believe that we can make best use of our after sales service infrastructure to service rigs of both the LETOURNEAU as well as Keppel FELS designs ... rig owners can now utilize our global network of yards to service and maintain their rig assets cost-effectively," he added.

Keppel O&M is also looking at alternative revenue streams to offset weak performance in the rig building sector.

"We are also winning customers for more diversified and specialized solutions such as FLNG [floating liquefied natural gas] conversions, liftboats as well as ice-class vessels which will position us to capture more value," Keppel Corp. CEO Loh Chin Hua said in the firm’s Oct. 23 press release.

The shipyard indicated that the third FLNG conversion project, Gandria, is on track with front end engineering and design (FEED) study being carried out for potential deployment in Equatorial Guinea with Ophir Energy plc, while Golar LNG Ltd. has initiated discussions with Keppel Shipyard for the fourth conversion project with a delivery in early 2019.

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