TPT November 2009

I ndustry N ews

Downhole specialist celebrates its first birthday at new premises

NORWEGIAN cased-hole logging company, TecWel, is the first company to move into the Energy Development Centre at the Aberdeen Science and Energy Park – which was officially opened by John Swinney MSP, cabinet secretary for finance and sustainable growth. TecWel UK was established exactly a year ago with oil and gas specialist, Chris Nussbaum as its chief executive. It is celebrating a year of success – and its first birthday – by relocating to bigger, customised premises at Aberdeen’s state of the art centre, built to boost research and innovation in Scotland's energy sector. TecWel UK chief executive officer Chris Nussbaum is delighted with the company’s first year’s progress and was keen to establish his growing business at the new Energy Development Centre. “The EDC is ideally located at Bridge of Don, Aberdeen,” he says, “a perfect location for technology-based companies like TecWel. It provides us with high-quality office, workshop and laboratory space, and our neighbours will be similarly-focused, high tech growth companies in all areas of the energy sector. “Our new location gives easy access to our oil and gas clients in Aberdeen and beyond, and we can avoid the burden of higher-cost city centre rents while enjoying TECHNIP’s board of directors have approved the company’s unaudited second quarter 2009 consolidated accounts. Thierry Pilenko, chairman and chief executive officer, said: “Our second quarter performance illustrates our 2009 priorities: good project execution, focus on profitability and selective order intake. We are, accordingly, able to improve our outlook for 2009. We now expect moderate growth in subsea full-year revenues and operating margins towards 18%, at the upper end of our initial outlook.” He said the company’s onshore/offshore profitability continues to improve year-on- year and it now expects group revenues of around €6.4bn, also at the upper end of the initial outlook. In the second quarter Subsea execution was again excellent, leading to revenues above expectations and a good operating margin.

an excellent and attractive work environment. The transport infrastructure is superb from here and, importantly, we are close to the airport for our international business trips.” TecWel’s Aberdeen base serves the UK, Danish and Dutch sectors of the North Sea oil and gas industry. TecWel specialises in well integrity and production optimisation surveys, and currently also has bases in Norway, the UAE, the USA and Malaysia; its expertise is based around advanced ultrasound technologies, and many of its existing clients operate in the UK North Sea sector. Chris Nussbaum has grown TecWel UK from a standing start a year ago to a staff of nine today. “Despite the global economic downturn,” he says, “we have bucked the trend and developed TecWel UK into an exciting growth company with nine staff – and now we have room at the EDC for further growth. We are actively recruiting at present and expect to appoint another four staff by the end of 2009.” TecWel is an award-winning company with its unique Well Leak Detector (WLD) technology – an ultrasonic downhole leak detection service, and the only one in the world of its kind; one of its current customers, BP, uses it extensively in Alaska. At the end of 2007, BP was reporting savings to date of more than $27mn, thanks to the TecWel ultrasound leak detector. “Onshore/Offshore, we continued to deliver on our major projects – for example in Qatar we have handed over Rasgas 3, Train 6 and Qatargas 2, Train 5 to our clients and in Saudi Arabia we reached final completion on the Yansab ethylene plant. We continued to carefully manage our cost base and our cashflow, and used our strong balance sheet to acquire a replacement for our Apache pipelay vessel. “Our backlog reflects our policy to maintain a balanced business portfolio. Subsea order intake has averaged over €550mn per quarter for the last three quarters. Onshore, we announced in July (for third quarter) two major awards for the Jubail refinery project. This is a project we know well, having done the FEED and worked closely with the clients for the past three years to align the overall project costs with their objectives. With continued uncertainty in the global economic situation,

The WLD is widely acclaimed and has been deployed in more than 500 well locations around the world – saving millions of dollars in rig workover time for its operators. “This kind of technological success is the way forward for TecWel,” says Chris Nussbaum, “and the EDC is just the right base for us as we develop both in the UKCS offshore and internationally.”  Chris Nussbaum, CEO of TecWel (UK) Limited (third from left), with the TecWel UK team

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TecWel AS – Norway Fax: +47 5551 8015 Email: mail@tecwel.com Website: www.tecwel.com

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Technip second quarter results show promising outlook

our clients remain prudent in their final investment decisions and focused on reducing project costs. The combination so far this year of a recovery in oil prices and significant deflation on equipment, bulk, construction and vessel costs are rendering projects more economical and, as a consequence, our tendering activity has been increasing. “For the remainder of the year we will focus on project execution and target contracts of all sizes that reflect Technip’s strengths. In an environment that is still volatile Technip will stick to its strategic priorities, maintain investment in new assets and R&D, focusing on the Group’s key differentiating attributes.” Technip – France Fax: +33 01477 82588

Email: press@technip.com Website: www.technip.com

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N ovember 2009

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