Becht targets Middle East for expansion
2 May 2023
US-headquartered engineering services company Becht is pushing to significantly expand its presence in the Middle East to take advantage of opportunities in the region’s energy sector, according to Chris Van der Beek, director of Becht for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
“We already have a local agency partner in the UAE and are in discussions with potential agency partners in Saudi Arabia and Oman,” said Van der Beek.
The company has active contracts across the Middle East and expects to win more contracts from existing clients as well as new clients.
In the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, Becht is active in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Algeria and Egypt.
“We have grown our services over recent years,” said Van der Beek. “The services we offer have increasing width and depth and we would like our existing clients to use more of our capabilities.
“That is our first focus. Our second focus is adding new clients.”
Long-term agreements
Historically, the company has provided consultancy services to refineries, petrochemical facilities and power stations in the field of engineering solutions and the use of plant equipment, including cranes and other heavy machinery.
Over the years, it has built on this offering to add consultancy services in supply chain optimisation, crude optimisation and margin optimisation.
Becht is now also providing its clients with digital answers and solutions focused on adapting to the global energy transition.
“We provide solutions and build long-term relationships, and with most of our companies, we will have a long-term technical service agreement,” said Van der Beek.
“Under this, we will help them with both small and larger questions as well as small and large projects.”
We believe that, by 2050, there is still going to be oil and gas around as well as a wide range of energy transition projects and this will mean a lot of work for companies like us
Market share
It is possible that Becht’s pursuit of expansion in the Mena region could result in it gaining significant market share in some countries.
It is already well established in North America, with more than 95 per cent of the refineries in the US and Canada on Becht’s roster of clients.
“Our consultancy contracts cover high-value technical engineering work for projects from cradle to grave, whether it is a project that is being developed or a facility that is already operational,” said Van der Beek.
“The clients are normally companies that can run and maintain a facility, but if something happens, such as a process not working optimally or a safety issue, then we can help to investigate that and help with solutions.”
Saudi Arabia is currently Becht’s biggest market in the Middle East in terms of active contracts, followed by the UAE and Oman.
The company mainly works on refining and petrochemical projects, but is also focused on natural gas plants, ammonia facilities and hydrogen projects.
“Our company has a very diverse offering that we believe will take advantage of a lot of growth areas in the region,” said Van der Beek.
“In Saudi, we have two large petrochemical companies as clients and our work includes carrying out engineering work for mechanical and technical improvements for facilities.
“In both cases, the work is focused on an already operational asset. When they run into reliability issues or other types of issues, we are there to assist.
“Often, they don’t have the very specific knowledge that is needed to solve certain projects in-house.
“Sometimes the technology supplier doesn’t even have the knowledge, but we can help them overcome these problems with detailed designs and advice about better equipment and materials to solve problems.”
Skills gap
Much of the engineering work conducted by Becht is done remotely, but it also sends out teams to visit projects and gather data.
The company has around 1,500 specialist consultants, most of whom have experience working as experts for oil and gas majors such as Shell, Exxon, BP and Total.
During 2022 and 2023, there has been a surge in large infrastructure project contract awards in the Mena region, leading to increased demand for skilled engineers.
Last year, more than $30bn-worth of contracts were awarded by oil, gas and petrochemicals producers in the Middle East and North Africa, according to regional projects tracker MEED Projects.
Gulf energy producers and petrochemicals manufacturers have leveraged high oil and gas prices to push through big-ticket projects. Yet project operators and service providers have not fully restored their workforces since laying off people during the pandemic, putting their existing resources under stress.
Van der Beek sees the skills crunch in the Mena region as a big opportunity for his company.
“A lot of companies are struggling to attract new talent to their firms,” he said. “We can supply the expertise and knowledge needed to help their full-time inexperienced staff.
“We can step in and solve problems and we can also help companies by offering coaching and physical training on-site to help people grow their skills.”
With the world population growing and rising standards of living in Asia, we expect increased demand for petrochemical products
Energy sector outlook
Van der Beek believes there will be significant opportunities in both the oil and gas sector and in energy transition projects up to 2050.
“We have been looking at the global situation and the heavy growth in population of 1.7 billion people by 2050 and the speed of the energy transition,” he said.
“We believe that, by 2050, there is still going to be oil and gas around as well as a wide range of energy transition projects and this will mean a lot of work for companies like us.”
Becht expects petrochemicals to be a big growth area in Saudi Arabia over the next decade.
“Amid the energy transition, there is going to be lower demand for fuels, so the molecules will be used for other purposes, and one of the logical ones is chemicals,” said Van der Beek.
“With the world population growing and rising standards of living in Asia, we expect increased demand for petrochemical products.”
Saudi opportunities
Becht expects the Middle East to be either its number one growth region over the mid-term or second after the Asia Pacific.
“Downstream businesses, and the global oil and gas sector in general, are recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, so there is a lot of growth in different regions, but the Middle East remains specifically important for us,” said Van der Beek.
“If you are driving around Saudi Arabia in the Jubail area, there are tens of kilometres with only refineries and chemical plants. It’s so huge. There is a wealth of opportunities for us in the country.
“However, we don’t see our growth in Saudi as something that will happen overnight. We want to grow our relationships there and we intend to take this slowly and prove ourselves through the quality of our work.
“We are going to invest time and resources and grow in a controlled way to maintain that quality.”
Becht hopes to sign several broad technical service contracts with companies in Saudi Arabia in the coming months.
The areas where it hopes to sign the contracts include process support, engineering support, asset integrity and turnaround optimisation.
Van der Beek says his company is not actively investing resources in winning new work across the whole of the Mena region, although the firm is willing to evaluate potential projects in most markets.
“The volume of activity that we are seeing in countries such as Saudi Arabia means that we have to choose carefully which markets to invest our business development resources in,” he said.
According to Van der Beek, Becht sees its expansion strategy in the Middle East as a marathon rather than a sprint. It is focusing on competing with other companies on the high standards that it delivers, rather than putting all of its efforts into offering the lowest bid prices.
He believes that his company’s focus on quality ensures that existing clients become repeat customers and helps to form a solid foundation for sustainable growth.
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Dubai prequalifies developers for $22bn tunnels PPP
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Dubai Municipality has prequalified developers for the first four packages of the $22bn Dubai Strategic Sewerage Tunnels (DSST) project.
According to industry sources, at least three companies have been prequalified as lead members of potential consortiums that can bid for the contracts.
These include:
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Other companies have been prequalified as technical members.
MEED reported in October that over a dozen companies were keen to prequalify as investors or sponsors of the planned public-private partnership (PPP) project.
They included:
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The request for proposals for the project's first two packages is expected to be issued imminently.
MEED previously reported that the bidders for the PPP packages will be prequalified consortiums comprised of sponsors or investors, EPC contractors, and operations and maintenance contractors.
The overall project will require a capital expenditure of about AED30bn ($8bn), while the whole-life cost over the full concession terms of the entire project is estimated to reach AED80bn.
The investor prequalification process for the scheme comes after the client prequalified EPC contractors that can partner with the developers or investors to bid for the contracts.
MEED understands that packages J1 and W will be tendered together as separate contracts first, followed by J2 and J3, with the requests for proposals to be issued sequentially, staggered about six to 12 months apart.
DSST packages
Under the current plan, the $22bn DSST project is broken down into six packages, which will be tendered as PPP packages with concession periods lasting between 25 and 35 years.
The first package, J1, comprises Jebel Ali tunnels (North) and terminal pump stations (TPS). The tunnels will extend approximately 42 kilometres (km), and the links will extend 10km.
The second package, J2, covers the southern section of the Jebel Ali tunnels, which will extend 16km and have a link stretching 46km.
The third package, W for Warsan, comprises 16km of tunnels, TPS and 46km of links.
J3, the fourth package, comprises 129km of links.
J1, J2, W and J3 will comprise the deep sewerage tunnels, links and TPS (TLT) components of the overall project.
J1, J2 and W will be procured under a design-build-finance-operate-maintain model with a concession period of 25-35 years.
J3 will be procured under a design-build-finance model with a concession period of 25-35 years. Once completed, Dubai Municipality will operate J3, unlike the first three packages, which are planned to be operated and maintained by the winning PPP contractors.
The project’s remaining two packages entail expanding and upgrading the Jebel Ali and Warsan sewage treatment plants. MEED understands that these packages will be procured at a later stage.
https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/13370610/main.jpg -
Iraq and GE Vernova complete plants upgrade
6 February 2025
US-headquartered energy technology provider GE Vernova has completed the upgrades of “several key” power plants in Iraq.
The firm and the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity (MoE) announced the upgrade’s completion on 5 February.
The overall upgrade project, which GE Vernova previously announced, covers 46 gas turbines across 12 power plants, adding up to 500MW to Iraq’s national grid before the summer of 2025.
They did not specify which power plants have completed upgrade works.
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Bankability remains hydrogen’s unbreakable challenge
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Energy & technology editorThere is some indication that green hydrogen as an industry has arrived at the valley of disillusionment if the Gartner hype cycle is anything to go by.
This is evident with the dwindling number of attendees and absence of offtakers – global commodity trading companies that are expected to buy premium green hydrogen and derivative products – at previously well-attended green hydrogen summits in major cities in the Gulf.
Following frenzied announcements of multibillion-dollar integrated green hydrogen and ammonia plants in the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly Egypt, Morocco, Oman and the UAE, between 2021 and 2023, it appears that key stakeholders have started coming to grips with reality.
Of the close to 80 green hydrogen projects that MEED and MEED Projects track, only three have so far signed an offtake agreement, and only one has managed to reach financial close.
The $8.4bn Neom green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia reached financial close in March 2023, nearly two years after it was announced.
The project, the largest of its kind requiring over 4GW of renewable energy and 2GW of electrolyser capacity, managed to reach financial close based on one of the three co-developers, the US’ Air Products, assuming the full offtake and construction risks for the project, note some experts.
A project’s bankability ultimately relies on suitable stakeholders taking on the risks for every aspect of the project, from construction to operations.
Currently, the risks or threats include evolving global regulations related to consumption and carbon emissions pricing; lack of technology maturity; supply and demand uncertainty; and the lack of mainstream demand, according to Wael Almazeedi, chief executive at Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Certification (I-rec) certified firm Avance Energy.
Almazeedi said these risks “need to be mitigated to the satisfaction of project lenders” if the planned green hydrogen projects in the region are to secure financing and reach the construction phase.
The challenges do not necessarily mean all projects will fail, however.
Similar to predecessors such as solar and electrification technologies, the hope is for the planned green hydrogen projects to eventually emerge out of the realm of disillusionment and reach the so-called enlightenment slope and, ultimately, plateaus of productivity, using Gartner’s hype cycle model.
Government support in terms of regulatory frameworks, inevitably including some form of subsidies to bridge the so-called green premium, as well as global certification standards, are at the top of suppliers’ agendas.
Across the key aspiring Mena clean hydrogen hubs, like the UAE in particular, clearer regulatory frameworks have started to emerge, which could encourage more cohesive cooperation and enable projects to get off the ground.
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According to Samir Rachidi, director-general at Iresen, the underground salt caverns are located near the capital Casablanca.
“There is already an existing cavity used to store natural gas,” Rachidi told MEED.
It is understood the same process or principle will be used to store green hydrogen in salt caverns.
The potential storage capacity of the salt caverns for green hydrogen can only be determined once the feasibility study is completed.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
Underground salt caverns offer an option for the bulk storage of very large amounts of gaseous hydrogen.
According to Ireland-headquartered chemicals firm Linde, which operates the world’s first commercial hydrogen high-purity cavern in Texas, the gas has to be purified and compressed before it can be injected into a cavern.
It added that hydrogen-filled cavities can act as a backup for a pipeline network.
First green ammonia project
Rachidi also said that Moroccan phosphate specialist OCP is in the advanced stages of studying a project to produce 1 million tonnes of green ammonia annually by 2027.
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It will also include an electrolyser plant with a capacity of 2,000MW.
At least seven other green hydrogen or ammonia projects are under study or in the pre-front-end engineering and design stage in the North African state.
In April 2023, a team led by China Energy International Construction Group signed a memorandum of cooperation to develop a green hydrogen project in a coastal area in southern Morocco.
A year earlier, Serbia-headquartered renewables developer and investor CWP Global appointed US firm Bechtel to support the development of large-scale green hydrogen and ammonia facilities in Morocco and Mauritania.
The Amun green hydrogen project, which CWP Global plans to develop in Morocco, is understood to require 15GW of renewable energy and has an estimated budget of between $18bn and $20bn.
Morocco established a National Hydrogen Commission in 2019 and published a green hydrogen roadmap in 2021.
The roadmap entails the production of green hydrogen for local ammonia production and export between 2020 and 2030; the production and export of green hydrogen, green ammonia and synthetic fuels between 2030 and 2040; and the global trade of these products between 2040 and 2050.
Main photo: For illustrative purposes only (Adnoc)
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