WOOD has won more work in the UK North Sea amid hopes the recent crude piece rally will boost activity in the area.
The Aberdeen-based engineering giant has won a contract to provide support services across Taqa’s North Sea production assets.
The five-year award covers work on a range of platforms.
Wood has been working on some of them under a previous contract with Abu Dhabi-owned Taqa. The new contract also covers work on the Brae Alpha and East Brae platforms.
The award provides a fillip for Wood at a time when oil services businesses working in the North Sea face big challenges. Oil and gas firms slashed spending in the area in response to the slump in demand triggered by the coronavirus crisis.
READ MORE: Shell boss highlights value of North Sea business as oil giant cuts Aberdeen jobs
The latest accounts filed for Taqa’s UK business show the company cut the valuation of its assets by $451m in March last year. The accounts for Taqa Bratani state: “The declining oil price, caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic and the supply challenge to the market, was considered to be an impairment trigger.”
The accounts cover the year ended December 31 2019, during which Taqa Bratani made $107m profit before tax.
They note that Taqa was awarded operatorship of the Greater Brae Area last year.
Rockrose Energy had previously acquired an operating interest in the Greater Brae assets through the purchase of Marathon Oil’s North Sea portfolio for £107m. Taqa claimed it was in a stronger position than Rockrose to be operator. Rockrose was acquired by Viaro Energy for £250m in July.
READ MORE: Wood judged to be ahead of oil services pack on renewables
The Brent crude price fell below $20 per barrel in April last year.
Brent crude sold for $63.36/bbl yesterday afternoon. It fetched around $70/bbl in January last year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here