WOOD Group has come a long way since it relied on fishing boats to earn a modest living 30 years ago.
The family-controlled company has branched out into providing offshore services for the North Sea oil industry and from there into other sectors of engineering.
From maintaining gas turbine engines on oil rigs, Wood Group found it was only a short leap to overhauling the jet engines of planes. It steadily expanded, extending its tentacles round the globe from Canada to Argentina and Malaysia.
Now chairman Sir Ian Wood reckons that the company has taken a quantum leap that puts it in the big league of engineering services.
Wood Group's new $800m (#490m) deal to boost oil recovery in Venezuela by pumping water into reservoirs to force more crude out shows that it can tackle the very largest offshore support contracts that the world has to offer.
Sir Ian is confident that this deal will establish the company's credentials as a serious candidate to win more mega contracts elsewhere in the world. In particular, he has his eye on other countries in Latin America such as Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, and upcoming producers in South-east Asia such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia.
The Venezuela contract is worth more than Wood Group's entire turnover last year. It is yet another reminder that the company has managed to break out of the North Sea to become a successful global company, able to sell its skills effectively in any part of the world.
Many other offshore firms based along the east coast between Dundee and Peterhead have followed its example. But with UK offshore oil and gas production on a plateau and set to decline, all of them need to start selling their know-how to overseas more energetically.
That is the only way to secure their own survival and that of Scotland's vibrant offshore sector in the leaner times ahead.
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