According to SMOE executive vice-president, M.P. Premraj, “Purpose-built to cater to upstream supply needs of the oil and gas industry in Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific, the new yard will actively bid for new projects as well as support SMOE’s yard in Singapore.”
“The Indonesian market is worth a few billion dollars as the country is constantly developing new fields to extract gas and crude oil. The new yard will serve as our launch pad for our expansion into the huge oil and gas market in Indonesia, the largest natural gas producer in Asia,” said Premraj.
“Batam was chosen because of its excellent infrastructure and close proximity to the company’s Singapore yard, which will enable SMOE to offload some of its Singapore projects to its new Indonesian yard [and will] will help us bid for more projects than what we can handle in Singapore,” he added.
The yard had already begun operations in November 2003 and is currently spread over 15 hectares. Plans are underway to expand the site to twice its current size, which would allow the fabricator to build oil platform modules as large as 10,000 tonnes.
