Big contract win for M&R’s oil and gas business platform
CLOUGH, part of the oil and gas business platform of JSE-listed Murray & Roberts (M&R), has through its equal joint venture with Amec Foster Wheeler secured a five-year contract to provide maintenance services to Norwegian company Yara International.
The value of the contract, which includes an option to extend for a further five years, was not disclosed.
Clough AMEC will provide maintenance services to Yara’s existing liquid ammonia plant, the Yara Pilbara ammonia plant, and to the world’s first technical ammonium nitrate (Tan) manufacturing plant on the Burrup Peninsula, located
The maintenance contract is a prime example of what Clough is working towards achieving across the group.
near Karratha in Western Australia.
Tan is the main component in explosives used by the mining, quarrying and construction industries.
The Yara Pilbara plant forms part of Yara International’s global production facility portfolio and was one of the largest ammonia production facilities in the world, with production capacity of 850 000 tons of liquid ammonia exported from the Dampier Port and traded on Southeast Asian markets.
The new technical ammonium nitrate plant, fully integrated with the Yara Pilbara ammonia plant, is in the final commissioning stages and will have a 330 000 ton TAN annual capacity that will be predominantly marketed and distributed to mining customers.
M&R group investor and media executive Ed Jardim said yesterday maintenance contract values tended to be less material than new Greenfield construction construction projects.
However, Jardim said the certainty regarding annuity revenue for the next five years moved M&R closer to seeing its strategy in action.
“As the natural resources market sectors are cyclical, securing for example long-term maintenance projects in the oil and gas platform and contract mining projects in the underground mining platform, helps the group smooth the cycles a bit in terms of knowing that a certain percentage of revenue will be guaranteed over that time if we continue to deliver to the client,” Jardim said.
Peter Bennett, the chief executive of Clough and director of Clough AMEC, said the joint venture was delighted to be awarded this contract because it had worked over the past two years to establish itself in the onshore oil, gas and petrochemical maintenance sector.
Bennett said it was Clough AMEC’s first onshore petrochemical maintenance contract in Australia, with services to be provided to one of the world’s largest liquid-ammonia production facilities.
The scope includes providing maintenance planning support, supplying management services, supervision, tradespeople, tooling and systems, including the Clough automated maintenance system (Cams), to perform routine maintenance services and shut downs at the Yara Pilbara ammonia and Tan plant.
Henry Laas, the group chief executive of M&R, said the group’s strategy required that its service offerings provided coverage of clients’ requirements across the full project life cycle in all chosen regions.
Laas said that this provided diversification benefits both in relation to geographic risk and the spread of revenue, and earnings across all segments or phases of the project life cycle.
“Clough AMEC’s maintenance contract win is a prime example of what we are working towards achieving across the group,” he said.
Bennett said the contract award validated the great work their people had done in delivering fit-for-purpose maintenance solutions that had a continuous focus on identifying and implementing cost-saving opportunities and exceeding operational performance goals.