Peterson Offshore Group looses ground with 5% drop in turnover

Energy logistics company, Peterson Offshore Group (“Peterson”), has announced its consolidated results for the 12 months ending 31st December 2016.

North Sea revenue was down on 2015 by 5% at £197m generating profit after tax of £0.9m, down by £3.5m on 2015.

This reflects the on going reduction in activity in the region and the impact of the tougher pricing environment in 2016. 

Commenting on the Group’s performance Erwin A. Kooij, CEO of Peterson said:

“Peterson has delivered a positive performance in what continues to be a challenging time for the energy sector.  2016 saw a second successive fall in global E&P spending which was down by more than 20% following a similar reduction in 2015.  We remain committed to supporting our clients to deliver safe, innovative, cost effective solutions that enable collaboration and drive efficiency in the supply chain. 

The Group’s UK based companies, including Peterson UK Ltd, 80:20 Procurement Services, Peterson Freight Management, LS Customs, Core 29 and StreamBA, contributed much of the Group’s operating profit.

Despite these market conditions we successfully retained existing contracts with CNR, BP, ENI, Siemens, Northlink and Centrica, and were awarded new contracts with ConocoPhillips, Statoil, Technip, Chrysaor, Dong, Dana, and Ithaca.  Developing our relationship built in the Southern North Sea, we were awarded a five-year integrated logistics contract with Shell for the Northern North Sea and now provide supply base and logistics operations support for all Shell’s North Sea assets.

We have been working in close partnership with a number of operators to support the creation of the CNNS Pool (Central & Northern North Sea) to facilitate vessel and other resource sharing through a formal pool arrangement.  This collaborative approach is based on our long-established and successful model based in the Netherlands, adapted to be fit for purpose for the UK sector. 

We have seen good activity and strong demand for our decommissioning services. Our purpose built facilities at Dales Voe and Greenhead Base in Shetland are handling the decommissioning of the 12,000 tonne Buchan Alpha structure; and we are facilitating the decommissioning of the Leman platform in Great Yarmouth.

We see good opportunities internationally and are continuing our international growth strategy, with more than £2m invested in 2016 in exporting our logistics models to new territories and we expect to benefit from a good contribution from these in 2017.

We were awarded a major five-year contract to support BP in Trinidad and Tobago and our local office now supports BP with all their work in the region, with our team growing to 70 people.  We are supporting several customers in the region, including AGR, and are working in close partnership with our customers to look for opportunities to facilitate resource sharing, whilst ensuring a continued focus on safe execution and delivery.

We continue to develop our service offering in Malta where we’re bidding a number of large projects to support customers in the Mediterranean and North Africa.  Significant investment has been made in expanding the geographic footprint of our procurement business 80:20 and we are now operating in Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, the USA and Canada.

Our ongoing commitment to technology is focused on driving efficiency and generating maximum value across our clients’ logistics operations. We made significant investment to broaden our suite of digital applications and technology.  With a continued focus on most efficient asset utilisation across the industry, our eHire application has now been adopted by clients, providing them with simple and effective end-to-end management of the asset hiring process, providing visibility and transparency of asset location and status.  Our lean receipt, store and pack tools support bar coding and warehouse management. 

Our clients appreciate the depth of knowledge and practical application of in-house expertise accessed via our IT strategy and diligence experts at Core 29; next generation applications development through StreamBA; and in Union Customs Code and clearance at our LS Customs and Freight Management businesses.  Our specialist procurement services business 8020 focuses on non-strategic spend, bringing both price and transactional cost savings to our clients.

Real-time information and analytics are at the heart of our intelligent logistics suite, designed to provide both our customers, and our business with real-time, historic and predictive usage patterns, events and inventory.  Our range of inter-connected, intelligent logistics tools and applications, eLogistics has been completely embedded across our global business enabling us to manage the supply chain safely, predictably and proactively.

StreamBA continue to make good progress with the development of their unique proprietary technology platform – VOR. This transformative platform uses the latest machine learning and processing technologies to bring multiple supportive systems together, providing one window and one source of truth into where assets are and where they can be at any specific time. VOR significantly reduces repetition and delay by increasing transparency and visibility to all parties in the supply chain.

Our people are fundamental to our ability to deliver operational excellence and we remain committed to attracting, retaining and developing the right people.  We increased our headcount by 20% in the last year to more than 1,000; and we currently employ 520 people in the Aberdeen area, up by 30% following recent contract wins.  We made a number of key appointments to further strengthen our management team and support the next phase of the company’s growth. 

Keeping our people safe remains our number one priority, and we will work hard to maintain our sector leading safety performance. We are proud that our personal responsibility core value enables all our people to feel comfortable and confident to challenge unsafe behaviours and stop the job.  We were awarded the ISO 50001 Energy Management standard, aligned with improving our environmental performance. 

The Peterson Group approaches its centenary in 2020 with a strong balance sheet, which enables us to take a long view, invest for the future and allows our clients to trust in Peterson.”