Fabrication and maintenance for Angola’s development

Angola

Frédéric Heintz, general manager of Petromar, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s 2023 maintenance and fabrication projects and the key investments it has made. Petromar is an Angolan company jointly controlled by Saipem and Sonangol and operates in the country’s construction and fabrication sector, servicing both upstream and downstream operations.

What are the main maintenance and fabrication projects that Petromar has embarked on in 2023?
Maintenance services for existing installations represent one of Petromar’s two main activities. Today, we are performing services on Block 3 offshore with Sonangol, on their Palanca platform, and on Blocks 18 and 31 for Azule Energy, with teams offshore onboard their FPSOs and onshore. Petromar’s Malembo base in Cabinda is also busy with metal maintenance works for CABGOC, which have been resumed at full speed after the Covid-19 period.
On the fabrication side of our business, Petromar is involved in the fabrication of the NGC Quiluma platform, including both the jacket and the deck. This means of course that the Quiluma platform will be fabricated and erected 100% in Angola. Worldwide, the market of suppliers is still a bit problematic, so we have some delays on materials for the project and could not start as fast as we expected.
We are also involved with Azule Energy’s Agogo Integrated West Hub project, which was sanctioned by Azule at the end of 2022 and for which we have been very proactive. We started the fabrication of 10 structures in Ambriz in March 2023, and they are now being completed.
Agogo IWH has a classic subsea structure scope, but the magnitude of the undertaking necessitates vast sums of equipment, space, workforce and co-ordination.
Working on both projects at the same time, Agogo IWH and NGC Quiluma, certainly is a milestone for Petromar in terms of volume and job complexity. The complexity is due to everything being done in parallel, and to address this, we’ve brought more people into our teams who need to be trained on HSE and be integrated into the organisation of operations. We definitely like challenges.

What were the key investments you’ve had to make to simultaneously deliver Agogo IWH and NGC Quiluma?
We had to invest in the yard area. With this volume of work, we need not only space for fabrication activities, but also more material must be stored. That’s why we turned our expansion initiative started in 2019 into a fabrication/erection area. We completed our expansion of seven hectares, which were added to the 26 we already had.
Apart from this expansion, we built a new fabrication workshop specifically for quad joint fabrication. We also expanded the yard for asset maintenance. This maintenance is mainly for our cranes, equipment and vehicles. We needed more space and people to have this equipment ready for production.
We’re also investing in new equipment. For this project, we’re investing mainly in 250-tonne cranes. We brought them from the other yards of Saipem Group, in this case from Saudi Arabia. We brought them in May 2023. Despite these new cranes, we also have to rent certain cranes, especially for the stacking of deck pieces.

What are the projects that will be driving growth for the fabrication sector in the coming months?
The first one is Azule Energy’s Ndungu field project. That’s the most imminent, and the fabrication for it could be done at our Ambriz yard. This project is quite competitive.
The other one, TotalEnergies’ Cameia-Golfinho project, is coming a bit further in the future. We’re talking the end of 2025 or otherwise 2026. It will depend on whether TotalEnergies will finally sanction this project and commence with the investment. That could mean opportunities for Angola in general and for Petromar.
We are in a good position in terms of capacity-building at our Ambriz yard. We are now in a very busy phase of activity and are able to deliver very significant volumes of work. However, once the Agogo IWH and NGC Quiluma projects are delivered, we will need a greater volume of activity so we don’t lose competencies, skills and investments.
We are making a significant effort to train Angolan resources from Ambriz. For Quiluma’s jacket and deck, for example, we need scaffolders, and instead of subcontracting the services, we launched a training programme from scratch for 50 scaffolders.
Regarding our maintenance segment, the market is different since we target more long-term contracts.

What is Petromar’s strategy for growth within the maintenance sector?
We need to understand the operators’ strategies, especially Azule Energy’s new potential strategy. Going forward, this strategy will determine whether we should develop small workshops for specific specialised activities in Angola, doing them by ourselves instead of subcontracting when needed. We need to evaluate what activities will actually be permanently needed by operators. Petromar will continue to adapt itself to the market and clients’ expectations.
On the other hand, our size also gives us advantages compared to the competition, for example, in dealing with the devaluation of the kwanza. Fortunately, we are quite solid, and we can absorb that shock. Some other players may not be able to, especially if clients start to delay payments and depending on the difficulty in bringing material in from abroad.

How significant is Petromar’s role in advancing economic growth and industrial expertise in Angola?
With both fabrication activities and maintenance activities, Petromar is at the forefront of industrial development in Angola, and we are proud of being a significant economic driver for the economy and especially for the Bengo Province.
We have been here for 40 years, and we have really developed the capabilities, both industrial and human, giving time to train local people and really develop competencies and stable jobs in the country. Training and Angolanisation are part of our DNA, and we look forward to continuing to grow and further develop within the country.

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