Wood Group PSN

Wood Group PSN’s Australian operations form the company’s largest international business unit, with more than 2,100 personnel now working across five Australian regions: Victoria (Melbourne), Queensland (Brisbane), New South Wales (Sydney), Western Australia (Perth) and Northern Territory (Darwin).

Back in 1912, William Wood founded Wood & Davidson, a ship repair and marine engineering firm, to service Aberdeen’s fishing fleet. Fishing in those days was a thriving industry along the east coast of Scotland; but although Aberdeen is still a fishing port, these days it is thought of as an oil town above all. In the 1970s, when oil and gas reserves were discovered in the North Sea, this presented an ideal opportunity to translate marine engineering experience into engineering and support services, and the Wood family took full advantage of the altered situation.

Today, Wood Group is a leading international energy services company, employing more than 34,000 people worldwide and operating in 50 countries. The company is a leading independent service provider for the oil and gas and power generation markets and is organised under three divisions—Engineering, Wood Group PSN and Gas Turbine Services.

Wood Group PSN is a new entity that came into being when Wood Group’s Production Facilities business merged with Production Services Network (PSN) in April 2011. The US$955 million merger created the world’s leading brownfield service provider with annual revenues of around US$3 billion and a 23,000-strong workforce operating in more than 35 countries. As Bob Keiller, formerly CEO of PSN and now CEO of Wood Group PSN explained: “The completion of this deal is a momentous occasion for both companies. Our aim is for Wood Group PSN to be the best brownfield services company to work for and the best company to work with. We have excellent relationships across a broad customer base and we have the capacity to invest and develop our people and our processes so that we can offer an unrivalled service.”

Keiller defined the new company’s goals from the outset. “We want to help our customers to get more from their assets; be innovative—do things safer, quicker, better at a competitive cost and provide a global skills network so talent is available where our customers need it,” he said. However, this is as much a statement of where the company is already. Though its headquarters are in Aberdeen, the merger simply gave the company a larger footprint, deeper resources and capabilities, and the capacity to add greater value for its customers. One of the advantages of the merged entity over other brownfield service providers will be its ability to deliver a full suite of brownfield services.

Wood Group PSN Australia is one of the most active regional divisions of the merged business, having been serving local customers for more than 14 years. As Australia regional director Matt Gavin puts it: “Australia is the power-house for the global supply of commodities. It’s a demanding environment, and we work closely with our clients to deliver safe, reliable operations at least sustainable cost.

“The merger of Wood Group and PSN in Australia creates an organisation with significant engineering and implementation capability in all of the major oil and gas and coal seam gas centres in Australia offering an enhanced and assured service delivery to new and existing customers,” he says. 

His regional office provides solution-based project and integrated maintenance services to the oil and gas, refining, chemicals, coal seam gas, and water industries throughout Australia and Papua New Guinea; however, its geographical footprint reflects the global nature of the group. The Melbourne office supports projects in Russia, Vietnam and beyond to Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa. While there is no lack of greenfield projects coming up in the country, the merged group will be in a good position to utilise its global base of brownfield personnel to lessen competition for skilled workers, says Gavin.

The company is a well entrenched partner for the biggest players in the petrochemical sphere, reflecting the diversity of their needs. Wood Group PSN provides an integrated suite of maintenance services for Caltex at its two Australian refineries; brownfield EPC project services to Esso for their operations in the Bass Strait; and EPC services for the Kipper Tuna Turrum project, which is one of the largest domestic gas developments on the eastern seaboard. The company is equally well versed in civil infrastructure projects, recently achieving a world-class maintenance audit ranking from Queensland management consultancy MCP AIMS for its maintenance management in water utilities. Wood Group PSN now has more than 2,000 employees in Australia, working both on existing long-term contracts and projects.

Caltex Australia, the country’s leading oil refiner, is a new client for the group. Last year the two companies confirmed the signing of a multi-million dollar, three-year contract for the delivery of integrated maintenance services, under which Wood Group PSN will provide Caltex with maintenance management, mechanical and support services at its two Australian refineries, Kurnell in Sydney and Lytton in Brisbane. “We were delighted when Caltex selected us,” says Gavin. “The contract is a significant milestone and augments our position as a leading service provider to the refining industry in Australia. This is the first time we have been awarded a contract from Caltex and we look forward to building a strong working relationship and delivering effective, efficient and safe operations in line with Caltex’s vision and our core values."

This year has also seen a good flow of new contracts for the Australian company. In April it was awarded a contract by Woodside Petroleum to support the Browse liquefied natural gas development in Western Australia. The facility, located 425 kilometres north-west of Broome, will help in the distribution of gas from the Torosa, Brecknock and Calliance fields that together comprise the gas fields of the Browse Basin, at depths up to 700 metres. These fields were estimated to have reserves of 13.3 trillion cubic feet of dry gas and 360 million barrels of condensate as of 31 December 2009, with a field life of 40 years.

In June, the company was awarded a significant contract for work on the GLNG Pipeline Project in Queensland. The project involves the production of coal seam gas in the Surat and Bowen Basins in Queensland, and a 420-kilometre gas pipeline from the gas fields to Gladstone on the coast, as well as a gas liquefaction plant on Curtis Island.

When PSN was brought in to take on the newly outsourced electrical, mechanical and instrumentation services of the Water Corporation of Western Australia, it was able to bring in oil and gas industry practices to deliver unprecedented performance on safety. Though the quality of service was already high, the company has delivered improved asset reliability and cost savings while achieving 300 per cent revenue growth against a 40 per cent headcount growth over 10 years, during which time the contract has been renewed three times. This is typical of the breadth of experience behind the newly merged Wood Group PSN that will be enhanced by the additional resources now available though the group’s global network. www.woodgroup.com