The competition between Norwegian and Far East yards in the fabrication of offshore platforms and modules

Abstract

For each specific offshore development project the partnership agrees on a project execution strategy and a contract strategy. These strategies determine how the project will be executed - how the contracts will be defined, awarded and followed up. The facility will often have a combination of “local” and “global” content. For fabrication in Norway the Norwegian value creation will be the contract value minus the value of imported goods and services. For fabrication in the Far East, the Norwegian value creation will be the value of Norwegian goods and services used in the fabrication.

It has been a common understanding that Far East fabrication is less expensive than Norwegian fabrication and Far East yards have won an increasing number of contracts. This has mainly happened during the last ten years, a period with dramatic cost increases worldwide. However, the market is currently changing and three main contributing factors to this has been illuminated in this thesis: globalization, oil price, currency.

With the reduced oil price, and a change by approximately 30 pct. in the ratio between Norwegian kroner and American dollars, there is a general trend towards a reduced cost level. At the same time, the globalization of the industry is increasing the competition for contracts on the Norwegian continental shelf, forcing the yards to give more competitive prices. This thesis seeks to discover whether this new market situation has changed the competition between Norwegian and Far East yards.

A qualitative research study has been conducted by collecting primary data through interviews, and secondary data from books, news articles, reports, and online databases. Through a study of the current trends and challenges in the industry today, the current market situation has been discussed and evaluated. Further, a quantitative analysis of five representative project developments has been conducted regarding their cost development and level of Norwegian content, in order to get a deeper understanding of how the market situation has influenced them. The analysis includes the projects: Gjøa, Edvard Grieg, Goliat, Ivar Aasen, and Aasta Hansteen. These projects vary in both technical concept and fabrication yard. The analysis shows a general cost increase in all the five project developments. In addition, the level of Norwegian content in the developments indicates a trend where the projects with the lowest level of Norwegian content are also those projects with the largest cost overrun and delay.

This thesis is aimed at providing useful insight towards the current market situation and its effect on the facility topside contractors, with focus on the competition between Norwegian and Far East yards. The work conducted throughout this thesis shows that the new market situation has contributed to a change in the competition between the two. The trend being that while the Far East yards are struggling to meet their expectations, the Norwegian yards are increasing their competitiveness in the competition for contracts on the Norwegian continental shelf.