Malaysian Crest Petroleum eyeing fabrication work in Sudan

PUTRAJAYA, Oct 16, 2003 (Bernama) — Crest Petroleum Bhd, one of the largest Malaysian offshore oil and gas drillers, has proposed to pre-qualify itself to bid for construction and fabrication work in Sudan’s oil and gas industry, its chief operating officer, Ken Pereira, said Thursday.

“We are going there, we are doing some pre-qualification work for some projects which are jointly-owned by Petronas and Sudapet (the Sudanese state-owned oil company),” he told newsmen on the sidelines of the OIC Business Forum held in conjunction with the 10th OIC Summit here.

Petronas, the Malaysian national oil corporation, is part of a consortium producing 230,000 barrels per day of oil in Sudan and is also involved in a number of integrated exploration and production activities.

Asked on the size of the Sudanese projects, Pereira said,”The projects are large projects, I can’t really speak about the project because we are in pre-qualification stage but they are large projects.”

All these while, Crest Petroelum has been doing construction and fabrication work in Malaysia and its planned venture in Sudan would be in a joint venture with a Sudanese partner, he said.

In India and Algeria, Pereira said Crest Petroleum was doing geotechnical soil survey work, something that the company had been marketing actively all these while.

“It’s a regional thing. We are marketing it actively in the region, we are trying to serve Mynamar and more in India and also looking as far as Africa…replicating what we have been doing in Malaysia,” he said.

Averaging US$1 million to US$5 million (RM3.8 million to RM19 million) per job, these geotechnical businesses contribute some 10 to 12 percent to Crest Petroleum’s overall business.

The company, he said, was always looking for opportunities to increase this business overseas.

“(The) geotechnical (business) is something that we are more advanced than other services in going regional,” he explained.