The oil services company signed an agreement with Royal Dutch Shell in 2009 for the design and construction of several floating LNG platforms on ships that will operate wells, and liquefy and store gas directly at sea.
It also hopes recent studies undertaken for Brazil’s Petrobras and Malaysia’s Petronas for similar projects will bear fruit in coming months.
“This (offshore) business generated sales of around 600 million euros ($873.1 million) last year and we think sales may double or triple within the next three to four years,” Thierry Pilenko said.
Offshore activities at Technip, which mainly consist of the engineering, design and construction of oil and gas facilities, accounted for 13 percent of the group’s 6.1 billion euros of revenue in 2010.
“We see floating liquefied natural gas as a true opportunity as it allows us to exploit deeper and further offshore reserves, and bypass piping gas to an onshore liquefaction plant,” Pilenko said.
“We are also witnessing a much higher-than-expected rebound in liquefied natural gas demand and we think this will continue.”
Shell plans to start the world’s first floating LNG project off the coast of Australia in a landmark project called Prelude and expected to cost as much as $12.6 billion.
The platform is due to enter service in 2017.
Proponents of such infrastructure say offshore liquefaction facilities can help developers access remote gasfields that would otherwise not be developed, reduce a project’s onshore environmental footprint and cut development costs.
