Petrofac expects record year

16th Dec 2009 07:01

Oil & gas facilities service provider Petrofac expects full year profits to be at least 25% higher than last year.The company has had a good year in the contracts front and said that with trading across most of its businesses continuing to improve, it should make profit after tax of at least $330m, barring unforeseen circumstances.‘In a year that has been very challenging for the oil and gas service industry we are delighted with our performance and the record revenue and profits we expect to deliver,’ said Ayman Asfari, group chief executive of Petrofac.Petrofac has seen a record order intake of more than $6bn in its Engineering & Construction division, while the pipeline for bidding prospects remains ‘healthy’.Tendering activity in the Offshore Engineering & Operations arena has picked up, as anticipated.In contrast, activity levels in the Engineering, Training Services and Production Solutions market have largely been subdued. Management is expecting this situation to improve in 2010.The Energy Developments division’s total production for 2009 for the Don fields will be around 3m barrels. Production levels are expected to rise after the second phase drilling programme gets underway in the second quarter of next year, from around 15,000 barrels per day (bpd) to a peak of around twice that.The group’s order backlog is expected to be around $7.8bn at the end of the calendar year, compared to $4bn at the end of 2008. Around $6.2bn of the backlog is accounted for by the Engineering & Construction division, up from $2.4bn last year.