Craig Group nets £13m BP contract while Babcock builds sub-sea gear

OIL major BP has awarded a procurement contract worth £13 million a year to Aberdeen-based Craig International Supplies (CIS).

Under the three-year deal, CIS – which is part of global shipping and energy services firm Craig Group – will provide “non-critical services” to BP’s bases throughout the UK, such as entertainment, hotel bookings and training courses.

The contract is CIS’s first with BP and will create “several” jobs in Aberdeen, taking its headcount up to 44.

Jill Macdonald, joint managing director of CIS, said yesterday: “This has been a significant win for us. Securing new business with high-profile international oil and gas organisations has been a key part of our growth strategy, which we will carry through into 2013.”

CIS – which also has bases in Cape Town in South Africa and Houston in the United States – turns over about £40m a year.

News of the contract came as BP handed a £30m deal to Babcock to build 74 sub-sea structures for the upgrading of the Loyal and Schiehallion fields to the west of Shetland.

The contract – to be fulfilled at Babcock’s Rosyth yard in Fife, where the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is being assembled – will secure more than 100 jobs.

The work is part of BP’s “Quad 204” project to extend the life of the fields, which opened in 1998 and have produced 400 million barrels of oil, through to 2035. Babcock said a second contract, worth £6.3m, would be awarded within the next three years.