New Global Floating Production Forecast Available
  by: OilOnline
  Monday, March 17, 2008

Infield forecasts that capital expenditure for the floating production market will exceed $34bn over the next five years, an increase of 25% over the previous five years. 2007 was seen as a year of consolidation, but during 2008 expenditure will reach similar record levels seen in 2006 and is expected to exceed this $6bn record in 2009. Going forward Infield forecasts that the year on year growth will be 4.3%. It is the deep and ultra-deepwater sector that will command a significant percentage of this spend.

At the end of 2007 there were 264 operational floating production systems of which 135 were brought on line during 2003/07. Over the next five years a further 175 units are expected to be brought in to operation, including the "speculative" units which are currently in the yard, but as yet do not have an assigned project.

We expect activity in Africa to continue to dominate both numbers and expenditure in floating production as deepwater and, increasingly, shallow water activities are expected to accelerate. Future activity in Asia should establish this region as the second largest region in FPS market sector.

Activity in the FPS sector is one of the key indices of the health of the offshore industry and as a result increasing levels of investment and innovation indicate that the offshore industry will be able to extract resources from the most challenging regions.

Infield expects that as the global fleet continues to grow, opportunities for consolidation and alternative strategies for ownership and development will present themselves and we could see further structural change in the floating production sector.

These issues and the value of FPS market are discussed and detailed in length in the Global Perspectives Floating Production Market Update 2008/12 Report.

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