The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
New business in the pipeline after Stats fixes China crisis
Subsea: Anchor had struck infrastructure vital to Hong Kong gas supply
Aberdeenshire firm Stats Group is targeting new business in the Far East after helping to fix a 485-mile pipeline delivering gas to Hong Kong.
The critical infrastructure, which is Asia’s longest subsea pipeline and carries gas from the Yacheng field in the South China Sea, had been damaged by an anchor. In the first project of its kind for the group in China, Kintore-based Stats was called in by COOEC Subsea Technology – a whollyowned subsidiary of China Offshore Oil Engineering Company – to temporarily isolate the impaired pipe.
The multimillion-pound contract sawthe Stats team working about 175 miles from shore and in water depths of up to 300ft.
Engineering studies and risk assessments determined the best plan was to remove the severely dented section of pipe and two manifolds from the seabed on to a pipelay vessel, while the infrastructure remained pressurised. COOEC welded on new pipe sections and flanges, while Stats did the isolation.
Dale Millward, emergency pipeline repair system and subsea services director, Stats, said: “Since this pipeline is crucial for supply of gas to Hong Kong, the shutdown period for repair work needed to be kept to a minimum. The repair had to be done without depressurising and flooding the entire pipeline.”
The project team also had to make sure any sea water that may have entered the system was removed before the pipeline resumed operation.
Founded in 1998 by angel investor Lorraine Porter and her brother, Pete Duguid, Stats designs, manufactures and instals isolation tools used for pressurised isolation, hot tapping and plugging in the global oil and gas sector.
It operates from Kintore, Kendaland Inverurie in the UK, Edmonton and Calgary in Canada, Houston, Abu Dhabi and Qatar in the Middle East and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
In its last set of accounts filed at Companies House, Stats reported pre- tax losses of £ 939,000 on turnover of £35.7million for 2015. This was an improvement of losses of £1.1million on turnover of £30.3million the year before. The group employed 273 people on average last year, up from 248 in 2014.