Wood Group steady despite project delays

12th May 2010 08:15

Wood Group says not much has changed since its 2009 results announcement at the beginning of March, and the energy sector services firm thinks 2010 will be in line with expectations. "We are continuing to deliver a robust overall performance from our production support related activities, and the group's performance in the year to date is in line with expectations," chairman Ian Wood will tell shareholders at today's AGM.At its engineering unit, subsea and pipeline activities have continued to enjoy good levels of business, but 2010 revenues are expected to be lower than last year as project delays continue to hurt volumes.Things should improve later this year as the upstream business should see volumes increase later in 2010 and into 2011, although the downstream, process and industrial business, the hardest hit, is expected to remain soft throughout 2010.Production Facilities is seeing good activity across longer term contracts in the North Sea though and contract extensions have been agreed with Total and Hess. There's an increasing level of international opportunities and the Australian joint venture is "developing well", driven by the growing coal seam methane market."Looking further ahead, we believe the fundamentals for oil & gas services and gas fired power generation remain strong and we are well positioned to deliver good longer term growth," said Wood.A trading update for the six months to 30 June is due on 1 July.