Middle East

WS Atkins, the UK-based engineering consultancy, has revealed that a pick-up in construction activity in the Middle East contributed to its strong fourth quarter results.

In a trading statement yesterday, the company said that it now anticipates results for the year ending 31 March 2011 to be ahead of current market expectations.

The company said: “The Group's operations in the Middle East have benefited from increasing activity in the second half of the year, together with further recovery of client payments against which we had previously provided.”

Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development Company will boost its spending to around 60 billion dirhams this year, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

Bloomberg reported that the state-owned investor, which holds stakes in companies such as the Carlyle Group and General Electric, will make substantial investments during the period 2011 to 2015 in Advanced Technology Investment Co., Mubadala GE Capital, Masdar, real estate and oil & gas, as well as a number of public-private partnership projects.

Vopak Horizon has been a major contributor to the development of Fujairah, a major regional oil hub. CEO Walter Moone talks to Gay Sutton about the latest phases of expansion.

Since the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938, the country’s economy has grown exponentially, along with its hydrocarbon infrastructure. Over the last two decades, Yanbu Steel has become the country’s largest indigenous fabricator of specialist structures.

UK-based oil and gas services provider Petrofac has won a contract worth over $240 million (£149 million) from Shell Iraq to develop facilities in the Majnoon Field.

Under the terms of the contract, Petrofac is providing engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction management services for the development of a new early production system, consisting of two trains each with capacity for 50,000 barrels of oil per day, as well as the upgrading of existing brownfield facilities.

UAE-based Polarcus has signed a letter of intent with Lansdowne Oil & Gas for a 3D seismic project in the Celtic Sea off southern Ireland.

The survey will commence immediately after completion of another 3D seismic acquisition contract over the Barryroe oilfield, operated by Providence Resources, in which Dublin-based Lansdowne has a 20 per cent interest.

The survey area will cover approximately 300 square kilometres and will take in the Rosscarbery, Amergin, and Middleton prospects. The survey is expected to run for 20 days.

Oman is on a mission to improve conditions for its citizens and provide meaningful employment opportunities, as Alan Swaby learns in discussion with Sohar Aluminium.

MIDEX AIRLINES has grown rapidly to become the largest charter airline in the Middle East and Europe. Dr Issam Khairallah tells Ruari McCallion how it was done.

The year 2007 may have begun by looking like a good time to start an airline; but the emergence of the banking crisis and the global downturn in trade may have caused some air entrepreneurs to think that it could have been a better idea to have sat on their hands. But not Dr. Issam Khairallah, president of MIDEX AIRLINES.