KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 11): Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) expects a better outlook in 2019 for key segments in the upstream oil and gas (O&G) sector, compared with its projection last year.

This can be gleaned from its 2019-2021 Petronas Activity Outlook (PAO) report published today, compared with its 2018-2020 PAO report's projections.

It is more positive on its expectations for the drilling segment, going by the expected number of jack-up rigs — of between 16 and 19 — required for the three-year period, which is almost double the projection of between six and 10 published by Petronas last year.

Another highlight is the much-better outlook for marine vessels, on the back of an expected pickup in drilling activities in the period.

Petronas increased the expected number of vessels required by the Malaysian upstream sector by an average of about 20 vessels across the board for the three-year period — comprising anchor handling tug supply (AHTS), platform- and straight-supply vessels (PSVs & SSVs), as well as fast crew boats (FCBs).

Outlook for carbon steel linepipes has also been tweaked upwards for 2019, with growing prospects seen, whereby jobs appear to be spreading into 2020 and 2021 as well, compared with more expected uncertainties for the segment in the previous report.

Concurrently, the activity outlook for pipeline installations followed a similar growth projection into 2021, although the outlook for the rest of the offshore installation segment is generally mixed.

Compared with the previous report, Petronas also increased slightly the expected man-hours for hook-up and commissioning activities (HUC) for the whole three-year period, as with the maintenance, construction and modification (MCM) works.

Petronas also shared for the first time the list of major contracts in key categories and its associated services, which pointed to new contracts within the offshore fabrications segment next year, among others.

On the downstream sector, Petronas has increased the number of expected plant turnaround activities in 2019, with projected man-hours more than doubling to 8.1 million from the previous projection of 3.5 million. Turnaround activities, however, are expected to slow in 2020, before recovering the year after.

It should be noted that the PAO may take into account activities that have already been contracted out.

The latest report also introduced new work categories, such as 'DP2 Support Vessel for Underwater Services', and combined existing ones like wellhead platforms and central processing platforms into a single category.