4 ways to more powerful market intelligence: Part 4

Change happens fast in upstream oil & gas. Ross Macdonald looks at the four core areas we focus on to make sense of the volatility and understand the bigger picture. In part four, it’s VESSELS.

Vessels – The industry workhorse

Understanding vessel activity is an essential – and often overlooked – area of subsea market intelligence.

Vessels are the ‘workhorse’ of offshore and subsea, a key enabler for the industry operations. Not only are some of these assets highly technical and ground-breaking in terms of their capabilities, for us they also serve as an extremely useful key performance indicator (KPI) for overall market health.

By understanding the relative activity or inactivity of different types of vessel assets, we can gain greater insight into the state of the offshore-service market. Not only that, but by breaking down the technical specifications of these assets we can form an image of what it takes to remain competitive in what will surely become a more competitive sector than ever before.

• Construction & Pipelay assets – Vessels in this area are likely to maintain some level of activity on previously committed projects in the near term, before major CAPEX work is either delayed or re-evaluated.

• Remotely operated vehicle support vessels (ROVSV) – In the current environment, the oversupply of ROVSVs (a hangover from the previous price crash) is likely to again put pressure on margins in this class segment.

• ·Dive Support Vessels – There is likely to still be an ongoing need for the higher-class standard Dive Support Vessels in some capacity in markets where ROVSVs cannot be used (due to older infrastructure).

Cutting through the noise

Market intelligence is about making sense of your environment. For us, understanding vessel activity and how it overlaps and interlinks with that of companies, projects and infrastructure activity helps us build our granular, bottom-up view of the industry and form an articulate and considered view of the market for our clients.

This is the central ethos behind our software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Flowline. Launched this year, Flowline takes the mass volume of information and anchors it to these four key themes, giving its users a better understanding of offshore upstream activity in a layered and structured manner. In this way, we believe it’s possible to cut through the noise and give a clearer picture of what lies ahead.

Ross Macdonald is General Manager - Market Intelligence at Archer Knight. Contact him on rma@archerknight.com

For more information on Flowline or to book a demonstration contact flowline@archerknight.com