Aker Promar News

Wärtsilä has signed major contracts with Aker Yards AS Søviknes and Aker Yards AS Trading - the recently established project development arms of the Aker Yards Group - for the supply of propulsion equipment for five offshore vessel projects being built in Norway, India and Brazil. The orders cover the supply of a total of 15 Wärtsilä engines, as well as power generation, automation, and other ancillary equipment. For the Platform Supply Vessel (PSV) being built at the Aker Yards facility in Söviknes, Norway, Wärtsilä will supply three 6-cylinder Wärtsilä 34DF engines.

Rolls-Royce has won contracts worth $76 million to supply design and equipment packages for nine offshore service vessels which will be built in four different shipyards for owners in Brazil, France, Norway and the U.S. The ship designs and packages of Rolls-Royce equipment will be supplied in 2002 and 2003, and the shipyards, located in Brazil, Denmark and Norway are scheduled to deliver the vessels in 2003 and 2004. There are currently 71 offshore service vessels of the type UT-Design from Rolls Royce on order or under construction around the world. Five of the latest orders are for the popular UT 755 supply vessel. The Aker Promar yard in Brazil will build two…

It is little secret that as offshore oil production moves further from shore, the boats that service these offshore units must be bigger, stronger and more capable than their ancestors. Here's a peak at emerging technologies and the boats that house them. The technology to cost efficiently discover and recover oil and gas in increasingly deeper part of the Gulf of Mexico has quickly led to the development of bigger, stronger and more ruggedly equipped Offshore Service Vessels, not only on drawings boards but operating on the waterways. The discovery of oil and gas fields such as Auger, Marlim and Mars, have among others, highlighted the vast potential for drilling success and the inadequacy of the current fleet of OSVs to perform the job as cost effectively as possible.

Aker Yards ASA reported an EBITDA of NOK 401 million for the fourth quarter of 2006, an increase of 15 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2005. The EBITDA result for 2006 was NOK 1 443 million, up 40 percent from 2005. Earnings per share (EPS) were NOK 21.77 for the quarter, and NOK 46.56 for the full year. Order intake in the fourth quarter was NOK 8906 million, giving an order backlog of NOK 79,420 million at the end of the quarter, comprising 149 vessels. Aker Yards had revenues of NOK 7 815 million in the fourth quarter of 2006, an increase of 60 percent compared with NOK 4 897 million in the corresponding period of 2005. High activity in all three business areas and the acquisition of new yards contributed to the development.

The transportation unit of Brazil's state oil company Petrobras said Wednesday that it will pay $1.2b to build 10 oil tankers. Brazil's National Development Bank will finance the shipbuilding project with $1.16m, the press office of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement earlier Wednesday. Silva and Petrobras Chief Executive Sergio Gabrielli signed the deal at the port of Suape in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. The financing is the largest ever by the development bank for Brazil's once-flourishing shipbuilding industry, which the government is trying to revive. The 10 Suezmax tankers will be built by the Atlantico Sul consortium, composed of construction companies Andrade Gutierrez, Camargo Correa, Queiroz Galvao and Aker Promar.

Norwegian shipbuilding company Aker Promar plans to invest $45.7m in building a new shipyard in the northern region of Rio de Janeiro state, the state government announced. U.S. offshore support company Edison Chouest will invest through local subsidiary Alfanave in the construction of an offshore support base in the same region close to the town of Quissama and Brazil's oil industry hub of Macae. The companies set the foundation stones on Tuesday. This will be Aker Promar's second shipbuilding facility in the country. The new shipyard will be large enough to build and carry out maintenance on large ships and oil production platforms.