LNG

Seatrium of Singapore, the shipyard engineering company, aims to continue with its liquefied natural gas project successes with a large book of projects to work on through 2025.

Seatrium has secured a series of major contracts with an aggregate value of S$350 million (US$259M), to be completed by the end 2025, reinforcing its reputation as a market leader in vessel repairs, upgrades and conversions.

Seatrium, formerly called Sembcorp Marine Ltd and renamed as Seatrium following its merger with Keppel Offshore & Marine, is moving forward in the sector after big LNG delivery highlights in 2023.

These included the successful delivery in November 2023 of the Greek floating storage and regasification unit, the “FSRU Alexandroupolis”, now deployed offshore northeast Greece as part of a Balkans LNG supply hub.

African FLNG

Seatrium also in November last year handed over the LNG production unit for the BP-led FLNG project offshore Senegal and Mauritania in West Africa and also involving Dallas-based US company Kosmos Energy.

The group said that the diverse range of complex contracts secured by the Seatrium Repairs and Upgrades unit and currently being worked on or being prepared for include upgrades and conversions of FSRUs, life-extension and remediation works for floating production systems as well as repairs to conventional LNG carriers

“We thank our customers for their confidence in Seatrium’s capabilities and for entrusting us with these important projects,” said Alvin Gan, Executive Vice President of Seatrium Repairs and Upgrades.

“With our expertise and extensive track records, we are committed to deliver safe, timely and reliable projects to our customers,” he stated.

The backlog of FSRU conversions involves three LNG Carriers (LNGC) being converted to FSRUs for Turkish company Karpowership, with an option for a fourth project.

“The conversion work involves installing a regasification skid, as well as other supporting systems such as cargo, utility, spread-mooring, offloading, electrical, and automation systems,” Seatrium explained.

This work is scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2024 and involves the vessels “Karmol LNGT Powership Africa”, “Karmol LNGT Powership Asia” and “Karmol LNGT Powership Europe”.

“This work reinforces the group's position as a pioneer and market leader in the highly specialised FSRU conversion market,” Seatrium added.

LNG dry-dockings

A series of LNG carriers will also be dry-docking in Singapore under a “favoured customer contract” with Hyundai LNG Shipping of South Korea

Vessel life extension, upgrade and remediation and maintenance also involves customers like Japan’s MODEC with a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit, the “Pyrenees Venture”, for Australian LNG operator and oil and gas player Woodside Energy.

“The vessel is expected to be re-deployed back into production off the coast of Western Australia,” Seatrium said.

The Singaporean company has also attracted business for its successful Cruise Ship Refurbishments yard.

“We have vessel retrofits for a series of 10 cruise vessels from our long-term partners, Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Group, in 2024,” Seatrium added.

Sembcorp Marine posted a net loss of S$192 million (US$138.3M) for the six months to June 2020, following the “severe deterioration” of activities at all its Singapore yards as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and amid a planned de-merger from parent Sembcorp Industries.

Sembcorp Marine’s results in the same six months of 2019 had amounted to a loss of S$7M.

The first-half 2020 earnings showed group revenues were S$906M and the net order book had S$1.91Bln of work outstanding, including liquefied natural gas sector ships such as LNG-powered vessels, bunkering ships and floating LNG storage.

A total of 74 vessels were repaired or upgraded at Sembcorp Marine yards in the 2020 first half, less the half the total of 153 vessels in the first six months of 2019.

The Sembcorp construction and conversion work for LNG mainly affects projects involving joint ventures of Japanese shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines.

Since April, when the Singapore government imposed its Covid-19 “circuit breaker” measures, in particular movement restrictions that disallowed migrant workers from leaving their dormitories for work, there was a substantial reduction in the group’s operating yard workforce (including sub-contractors) from about 20,000 to 850 persons.

Sembcorp Marine’s Singapore yards had to stand down and discontinue production activities, resulting in significant delays to project executions.

As a consequence, all divisions posted losses for the six months period, with the exception of Repairs & Upgrades which reported higher profits.

The company said Specialised Shipbuilding revenue was S$35M, up from S$7M in the year-ago period on higher earnings for Roll-On-Roll-Off passenger (Ropax) ferries as well as the LNG bunker vessel projects.

Revenue from Repairs & Upgrades totalled S$258M, which was 5 percent higher than the $245M in the 2019 first half.

This was due to higher revenue per vessel at S$3.49M from several upgrade projects for floating storage and regasification units (FSRU) and cruise ships.

Revenue for the Rigs & Floaters segment was S$459M, well down on the S$1.22Bln recorded in the 2019 first half.

Offshore Platforms revenue was S$130M. This included platforms successfully delivered for the Tangguh gas modules project in June 2020 from Sembcorp Marine’s Batam yard in Indonesia.

Singapore’s state wealth fund Temasek recently stepped in to support a S$2.1Bl rights issue by Sembcorp Marine to help its finances and as it also demerges from its parent company Sembcorp Industries.

Temasek in 2019 had offered to buy control of another Singaporean conglomerate Keppel Corp, whose businesses includes the hard-hit rig-building sector.

Sembcorp Industries owns 61 percent of Sembcorp Marine.

Sembcorp Marine President and Chief Executive Wong Weng Sun said during an earnings call on July 15 that the company had been positioned for recovery in 2020 before being hit by the double crises.

“Given the delays in executing our existing projects, and with new orders likely to remain depressed in 2020, the group now foresees that recovery will be pushed out to 2021 and beyond,” explained Wong.

“While we have yet to announce significant new orders this year, we have resumed discussions on several project opportunities,” added the CEO.

He has also brought in pay cuts across the board in all divisions of the company.

Wong said he had volunteered to take a 50 percent pay cut, senior management will take 15 percent salary reductions and middle management will be paid 10 percent less.

All other employees in Singapore and overseas will take a 5 percent pay cuts, except for those earning under S$1,800 a month.