China’s Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry is homing in on major contracts with Singapore’s Sembcorp Marine and Japanese floater specialist Modec to build hulls and topsides modules for two separate floating production, storage and offloading vessels destined for deployment offshore Brazil.
The two Asian offshore contractors have independently approached Chinese yards over capacity and drydock availability for the prized FPSO-related contracts.
Proposals have been sought from several yards — other players such as CIMC Raffles and China Merchants Heavy Industry are still in the fray — but a mixture of supply chain constraints and scarce yard slots among rivals have carried Cosco into pole position, Upstream has learned.
