PERTH company TSmarine Asia Pacific has lived up to the ‘coals to Newcastle’ adage, signing a three-year contract with international oilfield service company Expro that has a potential value of $100 million.
The service contract will be executed through TSmarine’s new Aberdeen-based subsidiary SALT Subsea, and comes less than a year after the local management team bought the business from financially distressed Aberdeen-based parent TSMarine Contracting.
The Perth and Singapore management teams gained financial backing from private equity investor CHAMP Ventures for the Asia Pacific buyout.
Under the new contract, TSmarine Asia Pacific will deliver worldwide support for Expro’s groundbreaking subsea well intervention system AX-S, with a particular focus on deep-water wells in West Africa.
Chief executive John Edwards said AX-S would change the way oil and gas companies worked on their subsea wells in the future, saving valuable time and money.
“There are about 4,000 oil and gas producing subsea wells around the world and this number is growing,” Mr Edwards said.
“Many wells are more than a decade old and require servicing to allow for maximum oil and gas recovery.
“Current methods involve positioning a rig above the well while the work is carried out, which is time-consuming and expensive with rigs costing up to a million dollars a day.”
Expro’s AX-S subsea system is 35 metres high and weighs 220 tonnes and is deployed from a monohull vessel, such as TSmarine’s newly chartered vessel Havila Phoenix (pictured).
The system can be lowered on to any subsea well down to a depth of 10,000 feet, providing a safer and cheaper alternative to current practices.
