It is harvest time for the Italian oil services group Saipem SPA, as it grabbed a $210 million contract from Shell Petroleum Development Company(SPDC) for the construction, installation, and commissioning of a 30-inch onshore pipeline in Nigeria. It was its 10th major contract in four months.

Saipem had in April announced new contracts worth approximately $1 billion in offshore and onshore areas of Tunisia, Angola, Norway, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, confirming Saipem’s status as a global contractor; in May, it announced another onshore contract valued at Euro 950 million in Algeria for an oil treatment plant, located in Hassi Messaoud, some 800 kilometres southeast of Algeria; and earlier this month Saipem announced two new offshore contracts in Kazakhstan and Egypt valued at $230 million.

Specifically, the company’s new contracts during the first quarter of this year amounted to Euro 2.368 billion and the backlog at March 31, 2007 stood at Euro 13.268 billion.

The latest pipeline contract in Nigeria to be completed in 2008 will link the San Bartholomew and Cawthorne Channel manifolds in the Bayelsa and River State regions for a total length of 46 kilometres.

The order also includes the decommissioning of the existing 28-inch pipeline.

Saipem, owned 43 per cent by Eni SpA, had earlier decleared a Euro 115 million net profit for the first quarter of 2007, inclusive of the effects of the acquisition of Snamprogetti (Euro 19 million), a 74.2 per cent increase compared to the first quarter of 2006.

The company has projected revenues in excess of Euro 9 billion and an increase in net profit, before one-off income from disposals, of at least 20 per cent for the year as against last year.

The Group is now the largest, most powerful, most international and best balanced turnkey contractor in the oil and gas industry. The organisation, while providing many different kinds of services - including specialised services and maintenance, modification and operations, has been rationalised into three global business units: onshore, offshore, drilling. It enjoys a superior competitive position for the provision of EPIC/EPC services to the oil industry both onshore and offshore; with a particular focus on the toughest and most technologically challenging projects - activities in remote areas, deepwater, gas, difficult oil. Its drilling services continue to be distinctive, operating in many of the oil & gas industry’s ‘hotspots’, frequently in synergy with the Group’s onshore and offshore activities. The new Group with over 30,000 people comprising more than 100 nationalities is a truly global contractor, with strong local presence in strategic and emerging areas such as West Africa and FSU, Central Asia, Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia.