Gulf Marine Services has been awarded a major new long-term contract in the MENA region for one of its Large Class SESVs (self-elevated support vessels)
‘The signing of this new contract is testament to our long-standing partnerships with national oil companies in the Middle East’ – GMS chief executive
The vessel will commence a four-year charter (three years firm with a one-year option) at the end of Q1 2015 on completion of its current assignment in the MENA region. The new charter is for a MENA-based national oil company (NOC) with a day rate in line with that previously indicated for the region for this class of vessel. GMS did not reveal the name of the client.
The vessel will be supporting the client’s opex work in the area.
“The signing of this new contract is testament to our long-standing partnerships with national oil companies in the Middle East,” said Duncan Anderson, GMS chief executive officer.
“It also demonstrates that demand remains strong for our technically advanced, flexible and fast manoeuvring assets for brownfield oil and gas operations, which is very encouraging in the current low oil price environment. Our ability to adapt from our normal multi-move well intervention activity into supplying a large capacity accommodation barge from the same design validates and reinforces our strategy to keep our designs flexible and thus ensure market-leading utilisation. We will continue to focus our efforts on providing our clients with efficient and cost-effective solutions to support their recurring opex-based activities.”
GMS has strong visibility on future earnings. This new charter award, taken together with the other contracts in place as at 1 January 2015, gives a secured backlog of USD 739m. The group’s entire fleet of SESVs is currently chartered, supporting brownfield oil and gas recovery, well services and maintenance work in the MENA region and in North West Europe.

Source: Oil and Gas Technology