Over 30 years Dolphin Offshore Enterprises has emerged as India’s primary offshore oil and gas industry diving and engineering service company, with a reputation for efficiency and innovation. Joint managing director Navpreet Singh talks to Gay Sutton about his strategy for expansion and development.
Like most innovative and dynamic companies, Dolphin Offshore Enterprises evolved from a chance business encounter aligned with the emergence of a new and expanding market sector. As joint owner of a ship repair company, retired naval Admiral Kirpal Singh gained his first insight into the capabilities of the diving industry while working on a salvage contract, and was quickly able to see the opportunities for the sector in the newly discovered Mumbai High oil field some 100 kilometres offshore.
Singh sold his shares in the ship repair company and formed Dolphin Offshore Enterprises in 1979. Then, by linking up with Taylor Diving & Salvage Company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Group, he acquired the necessary expertise and experience and began to provide diving services to state-owned ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation).
The business relationship worked very well and today, Dolphin is a large national institution with a reputation for innovation and efficiency, having pioneered many new diving and marine techniques in India and established a name for developing creative and effective solutions to challenging marine problems.
The company currently employs some 250 people at its offices in Mumbai and up to 2,000 people in its offshore activities. “Our focus is still very much on the oil and gas industry although we have done underwater work for the nuclear power industry and a fair amount of floating ship repair and salvage work,” explains joint managing director Navpreet Singh. “Until recently the bulk of our work has been on the Mumbai High oil field about 100 kilometres offshore, but over the last few years we have expanded our horizons and worked further afield with contracts in China, Vietnam and Malaysia.”
The company provides a comprehensive range of services, delivering anything from a single service through to complete turnkey and underwater engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction projects on oil rigs, platforms and pipelines. The underwater capabilities include air, mixed gas and saturation diving and underwater engineering services rolled together as the Operations division. Topside construction and engineering work, including fabrication, pipe work and hook-up commissioning, is managed through the Projects division. These are supported by in-house marine management and marine logistics support services, which have been hived off into a wholly owned subsidiary, Dolphin Offshore Shipping.
Behind Dolphin’s success lies an interesting strategy for project management. “With most offshore operations there are generally three agencies pulling in different directions: the marine vessel’s master, the diving team and the topside team. Each one perceives the project from their perspective which creates conflict and inefficiency. We’ve overcome this by managing all aspects of a project as a single operation,” Singh says.
“On each project, we nominate one division to take the project manager role, supported by a management team comprising people from all three disciplines,” he explains. “Each element of work is therefore aligned with the client’s best interests rather than the individual’s own.” The resulting project is run efficiently, even down to appointing individuals to handle elements of work for all disciplines.
Innovation is another hallmark of the company. “We have pioneered many new diving concepts in India, and find creative solutions for our clients which are efficient and effective,” Singh says. “The real challenge is finding the right solution, and this is down to the expertise, experience and knowledge of our people. Once we’ve done that, everything falls into place and it’s pretty simple.”
In 1990 Dolphin successfully repaired a damaged spudcan (rig foundation) in-situ for ONGC, and achieved the repair at a fraction of the cost proposed elsewhere. The solution that Dolphin’s engineers came up with was based on their knowledge of construction under hyperbaric conditions, and involved isolating the damaged section on the seabed by building and installing a coffer dam and then carrying out the repair inside the coffer dam.
This year, Dolphin’s engineers developed an innovative new product to help it achieve another first for India—the first pipeline retrieval for ONGC on the Mumbai High Field. Not only was the pipeline removed, but also the associated support grout bags. “For this we designed and developed our own grabber using a mixture of hydraulic systems. This was highly effective at removing the grout bags and enabled us to complete the job quickly and efficiently.”
It’s easy to see why good people are essential to Dolphin. The company policy is to employ only experienced and fully qualified staff, the majority of whom have been trained in Australia or the UK. “But we don’t treat people as commodities. We believe if we look after our people they will come back to work with us again,” Singh says. And this is very important as staff move around frequently within the industry, picking up knowledge and experience as they go.
Looking to the future, Dolphin has plans for expansion and diversification. “We have a three pronged strategy, going forward,” Singh explains. “Firstly we’re looking to expand market share in our current marketplace by establishing a larger footprint in greenfield construction, pipe laying and platform installation fabrication, and by increasing our share of ONGC’s budget from the current five per cent to around 25 to 30 per cent. Secondly there is a fair amount of deepwater work underway off the east coast of India currently done by foreign companies, and we would like to become the first Indian company to become involved in that. Thirdly, we intend to expand geographically into the Middle East and near Far East.”
Closer to home, the company is already well advanced with two major new investments that form the foundation for this growth. The construction of a waterfront fabrication and ship repair yard to complement the already established array of fabrication yards, workshops and storage facilities at Navi Mumbai will enable the company to undertake much larger projects and manage them effectively. Land is currently being sought in Gujarat with the aim of having the shipyard up and running within three years.
The second project has a visionary element to it and begins with the construction of India’s first diver training school. Final negotiations are underway to acquire land alongside Koyna dam in the state of Maharashtra, and talks are in progress with several international diver training organisations to help develop an internationally recognised training institute.
“Initially the Institute is aimed at the diving industry,” Singh says. But his vision is much more ambitious. “I would like to see the school expanded into an Institute of Technology for the oil and gas industry. Already we are seeing Indians working all over the world in the industry. I believe that by developing this area of expertise, we can do for oil and gas what India has already done for the infotech industry.”
