THE ECHO - Ferrostaal

THE ECHO 1/2006 15
African oil and gas deposits constitute approximately 10 percent
of all known reserves worldwide. With oil prices climbing, it is
becoming increasingly more cost-effective to produce oil and gas
in deep waters off Africa’s west coast, where currently little or no
production is taking place. However, the big oil companies discovered
Africa’s potential long ago. With state-of-the-art technology, operating
offshore platforms and producing oil and gas in deep waters is no
longer a problem.
The only problem is that there aren’t enough production
platforms. Due to the strong growth in the demand for oil, the
manufacturers of these platforms are fully booked up several
years in advance. “Currently, if an oil company wants to build an
oil or gas platform, they will have to wait for anything up to six
years,” says Horst Weretecki, who is responsible for offset business
at MAN Ferrostaal. In the case of production off the coast of
Africa, an additional constraint is the fact that each new platform
has to be hauled over thousands of kilometres by tugboats. Africa
currently has no shipyards for the construction of oil and gas
platforms.
According to Weretecki, the situation doesn’t look any better for
existing platforms: “If an oil company that wants to produce oil
on the West-African coast needs to maintain or repair a large
platform, the platform has to be brought to Europe, the US, Dubai
or Singapore to have the work done. There simply isn’t any
company in Africa who can do the job here.” In the best-case
scenario, the distance is 8,000 kilometres. In the worst, 16,000. It
all depends on which location currently has capacity. “Even at
that, you are lucky to even get a free slot because these shipyards
also get booked up very quickly. That can really hurt your purse.
For every day that a platform is out of action, you are losing
approximately 400,000 to 500,000 US dollars in rent.” This is
why MAN Ferrostaal is now working on a project to remedy this
situation.
In South Africa, the climate is ripe for building an industry for the
construction and maintenance of oil platforms. All of the key
partners for this project are strongly positioned in the country:
shipyards that focus on ship construction and others that focus
on repair, companies in the oil and gas industries, companies that
can deliver and maintain the technical equipment for platforms,
and civil engineering companies that can provide the infrastructure
for the harbour facilities. The country also has partners to finance