Kentz secures €285m contract

IRISH engineering group Kentz has won a €285 million contract via a joint venture agreement to build a village to house construction workers who are due to begin work on a major gas field development off the coast of western Australia.

The AIM-listed, Clonmel-headquartered company, whose main interest is in the provision of electrical and engineering services to the global oil and gas exploration industry, has won the Aus$500m (€284.5m) contract through the Perth-based engineering/construction firm, Decmil Group – the joint venture between Kentz and Australian mining company, Thiess.

The project is for the construction of a village on the offshore Barrow Island to house 3,300 builders who are working on developing the Gorgon Gas Fields on behalf of Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell.

The Gorgon field, located roughly between 130 and 200km from the north-western coast of Australia, is estimated to house up to 40 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Work is expected to commence on the island before the end of the year, once all necessary government approvals for the development of the gas fields are given and once a final investment decision on the overall project is reached by the three participating oil companies.

This is the latest in a line of recent good news announcements emanating from Kentz.

Earlier in the summer, the company reported a pre-tax profit of €30.9m for 2008, which was comfortably ahead of market expectations, and, earlier this month, chief executive Hugh O’Donnell told shareholders at the firm’s annual general meeting in London that trading for the first half of the year had been in line with expectations and that future outlook remained positive.