China seeks to wrest offshore rig crown from Singapore, Korea

HONG KONG/SEOUL, July 13 (Reuters) - China is emerging as a strong contender to the traditional offshore oil rig manufacturing powerhouses of Singapore and South Korea as shipyards such as COSCO Corp fight for a bigger market share in a deepwater exploration boom.

China started making jack-up rigs for shallow-water drilling and semi-submersibles for deepwater operations about seven years ago. In that short span of time, industry data shows it managed to secure a fifth of the $72 billion orders placed, tempting customers with aggressive pricing.

China also topped the annual orders lists at least twice during that period. In 2009, it outpaced Singapore, traditionally the dominant producer of jack-ups, and in 2006 and 2011, ousted South Korea on semi-submersibles.

"Over time there is no reason why Chinese yards -- the good yards -- could not be competitive internationally," Scott Kerr, chief executive officer of Norwegian oil service company Sevan Drilling, told Reuters.

Sevan has taken delivery of two ultra-deepwater rigs worth more than $1 billion from COSCO and has ordered another two such rigs from the shipbuilder, which operates seven yards in China, for delivery in 2013 and 2014.

The Norwegian oil service company bypassed shipyards in South Korea and Singapore partly because their yards were almost full and the Chinese offered a competitive price, Kerr said.

The better pricing had its downside. COSCO dragged its feet on the delivery of the first rig, the world's first cylindrical drilling unit, as the yard initially lacked some of the know-how to build and assemble sophisticated offshore equipment, he said.

With quality and delivery reliability a persistent concern, China remains a distant No. 3 among rig builders. In the first half of 2012, China secured just three orders out of the 29 placed during the period, versus 11 for South Korea and six for Singapore, data from Credit Suisse shows.

China's poorer showing so far this year is partly because most of the orders were for deepwater rigs, where Singapore and Korean yards still have a competitive edge. In the second half of last year, 14 out of 26 rigs ordered were jack-ups. China has had more success winning orders for that rig type.

But with newly acquired expertise, foreign technology and cheaper prices, Beijing could become a major offshore oil equipment making hub in 10 years, just as Singapore and South Korea supplanted shipyards in the United States and Europe in the 1990s, industry watchers say.

Strong financial backing from Chinese state banks also helps make payment terms attractive. Clients ordering from China could put down a fraction of the price as downpayment, sometimes as little as one percent.

Chinese yards garnered nine out of the 26 orders placed for all rig types in the second half of last year, industry data shows. That put China ahead of South Korean shipyards, which received eight contracts, and Singapore, which got only five.

Competitors have taken notice.

"I am in Singapore. I talk to vessel builders all the time. Singaporeans are very worried about the Chinese shipyards," said Jason Waldie, director of energy consultancy Douglas-Westwood. "The Koreans are also worried."

China expects to boost its share of the global offshore energy equipment industry to 20% by 2015 and to 35% by 2020 from under 8% in 2011, the official Xinhua news agency said. Chinese yards received $4.7 billion in orders last year, according to Xinhua.

The global economic slowdown has slashed demand for bulk cargo and container vessels. That drove Chinese shipbuilders like Cosco, China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC), China Merchants Heavy, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp (CSIC), Yantai CIMC Raffles and Offshore Oil Engineering Corp to start filling their idled yards with offshore projects.

"There is an excess of shipbuilding capacity in China. To fill their yard capacity, definitely many Chinese yards will have to be more aggressive in the offshore equipment market," said Gerald Wong, an analyst at Credit Suisse in Singapore.

More than 28 Chinese yards, including Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co, have announced expansion plans to take on offshore projects, he told Reuters.

Investors in Singapore and Korean builders such as Sembcorp Marine, Keppel, Samsung Heavy , Hyundai Heavy and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering appear unfazed by the Chinese.

Their share prices have been resilient this year and are backed by a series of 'buy' or 'strong buy' ratings from securities houses, Thomson Reuters data shows, outperforming benchmark indices and their Chinese peers.

Chinese shipyards like Cosco, Yangzijiang and Guangzhou Shipyard have seen steep declines in their shares in the past year as most of them are not moving out of commercial vessels, a languishing sector, quickly enough.

Their bidding for offshore equipment orders with low prices and attractive terms has also hurt profit margins. Douglas-Westwood's Waldie said Chinese yards can build equipment that is up to 20% cheaper than the output of their overseas counterparts.

"They are a threat. They are coming fast. They will take over or be as competitive," Sevan's Kerr said of Chinese yards. "For the Koreans or the Singaporeans to say that's not going to happen, they are kidding themselves."

The recent deployment of China's first home-made ultra-deepwater rig Haiyang Shiyou 981 suggests the country has developed the capability of producing internationally competitive and sophisticated offshore equipment, experts say.

Fitted with the latest technology of Houston-based naval and marine engineering company Friede Goldman acquired by China in 2010, the $1 billion rig owned by CNOOC was launched amid much fanfare in May and is to operate in waters as deep as 3000 metres.

Executives at South Korean rig makers shrugged off concerns about China, saying their yards producing deep-water rigs will continue to rule the roost for a long time.

South Korea makes no jack-ups but leads in production of increasingly popular drillships, garnering 87% of orders valued at $59.2 billion placed between 2005 and 2011, industry data show.

"We are far ahead of the Chinese," said Ahn Ik-chul, head of Daewoo Shipbuilding's public relations, citing the solid track record of Korean yards in delivery reliability.

By contrast, Yantai Raffles, now a unit of China International Marine Containers, had suffered a series of delivery delays in recent years that irked customers including BP and China Oilfield Services.

Big customers still turn to Singapore or Korean yards for quality. Denmark's Maersk Drilling, a unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk, said last week it planned to pay up to $8 billion for seven new oil rigs by 2017.

"We expect the new rigs will also be built in Singapore and South Korea. That's where the quality is," Maersk Drilling's chief executive Claus Hemmingsen told Reuters.

But industry experts say China may catch up quickly as the gap between Chinese yards and their South Korean and Singapore rivals is probably more about project operating and management expertise rather than technology.

None of the yards in Asia makes the high-tech parts used in deep-water rigs, such as hydraulic and drilling control systems. Those are all made by Western firms like Siemens, Aker Solutions and Cameron.

"It is not so much a technology gap. It is a management gap," Kerr said. "China can be just as competitive in building those (rigs) as anyone else."