Bourbon has received a timely support from China’s ICBC Financial Leasing in the form of rescheduling of payments as the OSV owner struggles with losses in a depressed offshore market.

Marine services firm Bourbon has been awarded a contract by Total Gabon for the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of 25 km of six inch pipeline, utilising one of its supply vessels.  

The protracted downturn of the offshore market has led to Bourbon stacking more idled supply vessels and recording lower revenue and rates in the second quarter.

The offshore marine market is anticipated to touch rock-bottom this year and the supply-demand imbalance is expected to achieve a better balance by 2017, according to Bourbon Offshore.

Faced with continued bleak prospects in the offshore market Bourbon is diversifying into the gas and ethane shipping markets in a $320m acquisition of companies owned by its parent Jaccar Holdings.

Bourbon reported continued falls in both charter rates and utilisation in the third quarter of 2015, as challenges grow in the offshore vessel market.

Bourbon upped its second-quarter revenues by 11% to EUR375m ($407m) over the same period in 2014, pushing its H1 revenues to EUR758.8m, a 13% increase over the year previous, despite the tanking offshore market.

It would appear that Tan Kean Soon has won the boardroom tussle at Tanjung Offshore.

Offshore vessel owner and operator Bourbon has reported a 5.6% drop in revenues between Q1 2015 and the last quarter of 2014, and has put 23 vessels into lay-up.

Offshore vessel operator Bourbon reported a 4.4% increase in revenues in 2014 to EUR1.3bn, but with a slow down in deepwater markets towards the end of the year.