Foresight eyes Indian energy sector

London: Shipping, drilling and hospitality expert Foresight Group has targeted Indian refiners with its joint venture with Norway's Fred Olsen Production. The project will see the deployment of the Knock Nevis (pictured) to India for use as a Floating Blending Storage and Offloading (FBSO) platform, thereby offering the country's refiners an in-place offshore storage cum blending facility of 4.3m barrels.

The vessel not only has the ability to receive stable blended crudes but also to blend heavier (and cheaper) viscosity crudes in larger proportions with the lighter (expensive) viscosity crudes in proportions that match the requirement of different refineries, thereby the average cost of the input crude into the refinery.

"Foresight Group with its partner Fred Olsen Productions is providing a cost optimising solution with state of the art technology, which would benefit refining Industry facing shortage of both storage facilities and lack of flexible blending solutions," said Foresight ceo Anil Deshpande, adding that the Indian offshore and energy sectors held extremely attractive long term prospects.

Foresight, which celebrates 25 years of operations this year, also recently purchased a sizable equity stake in Cecon  ASA of Arendal, Norway,  a niche operator in the pipeline-laying, end of line terminations, and field end of life de-mobilisation in the offshore industry. The company, which provides its clients with design, engineering, installation and equipment procurement  and utilisation via its own in-house resources is in the process of building three state of the art DP3 support vessels for deep and ultra-deep water offshore operations.

"Foresight Group sees the fit with Cecon as an ideal growth story for Indian offshore engineering industry, whereby Indian oil majors such as ONGC are able to avail and support the creation of an indigenous offshore engineering industry much as Petrobras has achieved for Brazil, that uses latest state of the art technology to benefit the fast growing Indian offshore deepwater requirements in this highly specialised industry," Deshpande added.  [17/08/09]