Sheffield Forgemasters wins multi-million pound contract in Gulf of Mexico

The deal is the second contract win Foregemasters has announced in the Gulf of Mexico this year following the revelation in July it was to supply Samsung Heavy Industries with castings.

The Samsung deal is the first offshore project in the gulf to have been sanctioned since offshore oil and gas markets crashed two years ago.

This second offshore platform commissioned sees Forgemasters chosen for the supply of engineered cast components to Shell.

The project will see the company’s offshore oil & gas specialist, Vulcan SFM, deliver 10 riser basket components weighing approximately 11.5 tonnes each for a semi-submersible platform which will be deployed in the GoM for Shell’s Vito development.

Vulcan SFM will cast the riser baskets at Sheffield Forgemasters’ Brightside Lane foundry. They will be attached to the hull of the platform, in this case a semi-submersible, to support the various risers coming up from the sea-bed.

Although no value is being placed on the deal it is understood to worth several million.

Paul Mockford, design director at Vulcan SFM, said: “These two contracts are the first signs of any return to offshore work after a complete cessation of new oil and gas developments on a worldwide basis which came into effect when the price of oil plummeted in 2015.

“We have been fortunate that our expertise in the field of supply to offshore projects, coupled with our long-term relationships with the major oil companies including Shell, helped us into a prime position to secure contracts on the first two projects commissioned requiring offshore platforms in more than two years.

“To win successive contracts of this nature, in what has become a very hungry supply chain due to an absence of offshore developments, is no small feat.”

Sheffield Forgemasters started manufacture of the components for Shell in August and the completion is now expected by June 2018.