The hum of machinery is repeated at the nearby dockyard of Singapore's Keppel FELS, the world's number one maker of jack-up oil rigs, as workers put the finishing touches to at least three gigantic rigs and a submersible barge due for delivery this year.

Singapore's offshore marine industry is coping relatively well despite an economic slump in the island-republic, and is hoping to benefit from a global recovery after a much-anticipated US-led attack against Iraq, industry officials said.

A trend towards oil and gas exploration in deeper portions of the world's seas -- beyond 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) -- is expected to give the industry a boost as petroleum firms seek to reduce dependence on oil from the Middle East, they added.

Capital expenditures for the global offshore marine industry are expected to grow to 236 billion US dollars in 2006, up from 192 billion dollars in 2000, industry figures show, and Singapore is aiming to cash in on the market.

"It (an Iraq war) has really has very little effect on our market because you have to consider that deep water projects take 10 years from discovery to the actual execution and installation of the equipment," said Peyrer, who overseas Cooper Cameron's Asia-Pacific and Middle East operations from Singapore.

"These are long-term projects which have a long-term economic model as a base, so short-term crises will not affect our business," he told reporters during a recent tour of the company's facilities.

"Our business goes on with or without war. If you take Indonesia or any other country in the Middle East, 90 percent of their income is the production of oil and gas so production has to continue," he said.

Cooper Cameron (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., a subsidiary of a Houston-based group, is a key manufacturer of valves, wellheads, controls, chokes, blowout preventers and assembled systems for oil and gas drilling worldwide. The equipment can be used in onshore, offshore and subsea applications.

"There is tremendous activity in West Africa and even in Asia. The focus is on diversification to decrease reliance on the Middle East," said Peyrer.

"There's a lot of oil companies moving into areas like China and Russia and west Africa to diversify and to cushion political crises," he said.

The 56-year-old Austrian said "easy oil" has been found in shallow waters, "so the only way to find major oil or gas anywhere in the world you have to go either into frontier locations or into deeper waters."

Michael Chia, executive director at offshore engineering firm Keppel FELS, said most of their business now is in the repair and refurbishment of oil rigs -- rather than building new ones -- as exploration firms take advantage of the weak economic climate to fix their old equipment.

"A lot of investments are out there, ready to be committed but nobody wants to ink them," he said. "These commitments are made by the oil and gas majors... Of course in the meantime, they are bringing all their rigs, their ships for service and for repairs."

Singapore, strategically located off the busy Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia, is well-positioned to ride on any boom in the marine engineering sector.

As a ship-repair centre, the island has a 20 percent market share for ocean-going vessels worldwide and accounts for two-thirds of the global volume in the conversion of ships into floating production, storage and offloading vessels.

Keppel FELS accounts for 60 percent of all jack-up rigs built worldwide in the last five years.

At Keppel FELS' drydock, a submersible barge due for delivery in mid-May was being touched up. Nearby, a 20-year-old jack-up rig was being upgraded, its iron legs strengthened and a new helicopter deck built.

On the waterfront stood the Ocean Rover, a towering black and gray semi-submersible rig being upgraded for delivery in May. A few meters away, workers were finishing a brand new jack-up oil rig for international drilling firm Atwood Oceanics.

The rig, a virtual community for 112 people equipped with amenities ranging from a hospital, a gym and a helicopter landing pad, was built in 18 months at a cost of about 120 million US dollars and can be used anywhere in the world except the North Sea.

"As a whole, the fundamentals are there," Chia said. "I suppose if the Iraq situation can be settled sooner, everybody has a clearer picture of what's going to happen further down the road."

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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