Petrofac, which generated around three quarters of its revenue in 2010 from designing and building oil and gas infrastructure in countries such as Algeria, Oman and Saudi Arabia, said the impact of unrest in the region on its operations had so far been minimal.

“We’re monitoring the developments very, very carefully,” said Chief Financial Officer Keith Roberts, adding that to date the company had only been affected in Tunisia where operations had now returned to normal.

“These countries, their oil and gas industries are very important hard currency earners for them, so in a sense whatever happens I think it would be a national priority to get continued production of oil and gas and that is a medium-term positive.”

Analysts at JP Morgan said Petrofac had given one of the most confident and bullish outlooks statements they had seen for a long time in the oil field services sector.

“This stock deserves a significant re-rating in our view, although we acknowledge that some of this may have to wait until risk aversion to Middle East exposure declines somewhat,” they said.

Petrofac’s net profit grew to $433 million in 2010 on a like-for-like basis, up from $353.6 million the year before and ahead of a consensus forecast of $421 million from a company-supplied poll of 20 analysts.

Reported net profit for the year came in significantly higher at $557.8 million, boosted by the de-merger of the group’s North Sea oil assets from its energy developments division last March.

Roberts said that the energy developments business, which has interests in oil assets in Tunisia and Malaysia, would be an important area of growth for the company in the future.

Petrofac in January appointed BP’s former drilling boss Andy Inglis to lead its energy development business.

“We are confident we can begin to ramp up the scale of this part of our business,” he said.

“In time, the energy developments business will we think make a growing contribution to the mix, although in 2011 we are investing in projects, so the actual profit and cash flow is likely to be in the future.”

The constraint to growing this part of the business was finding the right opportunities, said Roberts, who would not comment on whether Petrofac was interested in buying some assets BP put up for sale in the southern North Sea.

When asked whether Petrofac’s partner in Nigeria, Seven Energy, was bidding on any assets put up for sale by Shell in the West African country, he said that the assets were clearly of potential interest but would not comment further.

The company announced it would pay a final dividend of 30 cents per share bringing the total dividend for the year to 43.80 cents, up 22 percent on 2009.