JUST three months after unveiling plans to build a massive new yard on its home ground, Sembcorp Marine said yesterday that it is also building a new shipyard in Brazil to take advantage of one of the fastest growing offshore oil-and-gas (O&G) exploration and production markets in the world.
SembMarine, through wholly owned Jurong Shipyard (JSPL), has acquired a site in Espirito Santo state, which is the second largest producer of oil in Brazil, with freehold land area of 82.5 hectares to be developed as a shipyard.
SembMarine declined to disclose the purchase price, saying details of the shipyard and the capex plans 'will be announced separately at an appropriate time'.
Engineering design for the new shipyard has commenced, with development and construction works to be undertaken in stages. It is believed that marketing for the yard's services has already begun as SembMarine scrambles to get a slice of Petrobras's five-year investment budget of US$174.4 billion from 2009 to 2013 which it announced last year. Work on topside modules, for example, can be done concurrently as the yard is being built.
'We estimate that the workshop for fabrication and engineering process to be completed by mid-2010 and drydock to be competed by end-2010,' said CIMB in a research note. 'Meanwhile, the yard will be able to take on repair, conversion and fabrication jobs concurrently as upgrades and enhancements to the yard are being made. We believe the capex of the yard to be around US$200 million, funded internally,' it added.
On completion, the shipyard will be equipped with a drydock, slipways, berthing quays and ancillary steel and piping facilities. It will be capable of drillship construction, building of semi-submersible rigs, undertaking FPSO integration, fabrication of topside modules and PSVs construction, in addition to the traditional activities of drilling rig repairs, ship repairs and modification works.
The yard site has 1.6 km of coastline and is strategically located close to the offshore Espirito Santo Basin, which is one of the recently discovered giant pre-salt oil basins of Brazil, making it an ideal location to support the country's oil-and-gas activities.
It was reported last year that Keppel Corp was in talks with Brazilian company WTorre on a 70 per cent stake in a shipyard project at Rio Grande in southern Brazil. The cost of this was estimated at US$1 billion at the time. However, no further news has emerged on this project. Keppel already has a massive yard in Angra in Rio de Janeiro state.
'We have been a key player in Brazil's oil-and- gas construction industry since 1997, having delivered to date a total of 11 units of oil-and-gas exploration, production and storage platforms to Brazilian oilfields,' said SembMarine president and CEO Wong Weng Sun.
The project is being developed through Jurong Netherlands BV, a company incorporated in the Netherlands. The company will in turn fully own a locally incorporated Brazilian company, Estaleiro Jurong Aracruz Ltda, which will own the shipyard. Jurong do Brasil Prestacao de Services Ltda, another company incorporated in Brazil and owned by Jurong Netherlands, will undertake marine and offshore services in Brazil.