WOOD Group has won a multi-million dollar contract to work on an oil refinery in Lincolnshire which will help the company reduce its reliance on the depressed North Sea market.
Aberdeen-based Wood has been appointed by Total to provide maintenance services on the Lindsey refinery for five years, with the option to extend for two more.
Chief executive Robin Watson noted the contract provided a reward for Wood’s efforts to use expertise developed supporting oil and gas firms offshore to win work in other sectors.
The company has been working on Total’s North Sea production facilities for more than 20 years.
Wood Group has been hit hard by the slump in new development activity in the North Sea amid the downturn triggered by the sharp fall in the crude price since 2014.
On Monday the company completed the £2.2 billion acquisition of Amec Foster Wheeler, which forms a key element of Mr Watson’s strategy to take the group into new markets and extend its geographic reach.
“We are strategically focused on leveraging our proven offshore track record of strong service, to broaden our downstream footprint in the UK; and this contract win achieves this,” said Mr Watson of the Lindsey win.
Total took control of the refinery in 1999 after acquiring Fina.
In February 2015 the group announced plans to reduce the output at the plant by 50 per cent and to cut job numbers from 580 to 400. Analysts noted there was overcapacity in the European refining market.
It planned to invest around £180m over five years to help increase efficiency at the plant.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here