SCOTLAND'S oil fabrication industry yesterday lost a key contract to
Belgium.
Mr Bob Bull, general manager of the Highlands Fabricators yard at Nigg
on the Cromarty Firth, said the company had failed to land an order for
7000 tonnes of steel-fabrication for Norway.
The American-owned yard had bid, as a sub-contractor, for the contract
to supply components for a processing facility being built at Kollsnes,
near Bergen, to handle gas brought there by an undersea pipeline from
Norsk Shell's giant Troll field in the North Sea.
At present 700 people are employed at Hi-Fab, compared with more than
2000 about 18 months ago.
Mr Bull said the loss of the order would mean job cuts, but he
declined to be specific. Shop stewards convener Jimmy Stewart feared
that the 480 hourly-paid workers could be cut to just 50 by April.
Four of the five contracts under way at Nigg are due to be completed
by May. This includes the yard's biggest order for the main
jacket-platform for French-owned oil company Elf's Froy field in the
Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
The Nigg yard has won a major contract for the jacket-platform for
BP's Andrew oilfield, but work on it does not start until the latter
part of the year.
Hi-Fab had hoped to work as sub-contractors on the Kollsnes project
for a joint-venture partnership of London-based process engineering
contractors M. W. Kellog Ltd, and Norway's Aker Engineering group.
Mr Bull was philosophical over the yard's failure. He said: ''Of
course, we are disappointed, and it makes things that bit more difficult
for us. We may have lost the battle, but we intend to win the war.''
He added: ''In the tough climate for oil industry work at present,
winning means ensuring that this yard stays in business, and that is
what will happen.''
He said that the company was bidding for four or five contracts.
The Aker-Kellog contract for pipe-rack units and pre-assembled units
is estimated to be worth about #20m, out of the total cost of #360m for
the Kollsnes facility, which is one of the largest industrial projects
ever to be built by Norway.
It would have ensured continuity of work for 700 men at Nigg. About
15,000 jobs have been lost over the past two years at UK oil fabrication
yards, now only 5000 remain.
About 4000 have gone in the Highlands, where the other major yard, the
McDermott-Scotland yard at Ardersier, near Inverness, has been
mothballed since last spring. A skeleton staff there is still bidding
for contracts.
One of the largest UK oilyard contracts on the horizon is for the
development of England's first offshore oilfield.
Australian-owned Hamilton Brothers will shortly be asking yards to
tender for building five jacket-platforms and four topsides
deck-sections for developing its Liverpool Bay complex of oil and gas
fields.
' Of course, we are disappointed, and it makes things that bit more
difficult for us. We may have lost the battle, but we intend to win the
war. '
Bob Bull, general manager
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