At the end of the year, as the global energy market focuses on transformation and volatility, the pulse of deep-sea oil and gas development remains strong. Saipem, an Italian marine giant, performed a "hat trick" at the end of 2025, winning new orders from Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, with a total value of more than $1 billion. This not only adds another highlight to its already glorious performance, but also complements the $4 billion mega order jointly won by Qatar a few days ago, clearly outlining the industry landscape of sustained recovery in the global deep-sea engineering market and giant enterprises winning opportunities with technological strength and long-term agreements. From the Persian Gulf to the depths of the Black Sea, a deep-sea exploration and development competition driven by super engineering is quietly entering a new climax.

Stable cornerstone under long-term agreements

As one of the world's most important oil and gas markets, Saudi Arabia has always been a core strategic area for Saipan. The two contracts obtained this time were not awarded by chance, but based on the continuation and release of the existing long-term cooperation agreement (CRPO mechanism) with Saudi Aramco. This demonstrates the establishment of stable long-term partnerships in core markets, which is the "ballast stone" for offshore giants to resist industry cyclical fluctuations.

Specifically, the CRPO 162 contract is for a period of 32 months and has a high value. It mainly involves the EPCI and superstructure engineering of approximately 34 kilometers of subsea pipelines in the Berri and Abu Safah oil fields, with comprehensive technical requirements. The CRPO 165 contract is for a period of 12 months and focuses on underwater intervention and short distance onshore pipeline engineering in the Marjan oil field, providing greater flexibility. These two contracts will fully utilize Saipan's deployed fleet resources in the local area, achieve efficient collaboration, and consolidate its leading service provider position in the Persian Gulf waters.

New challenges of ultra deep water technology

If Saudi Arabia's order is to consolidate the basic market, the contract signed with Türkiye Petroleum Company (TP) for the third phase expansion of Sakaria gas field is a deep development towards the technical frontier. This contract, worth about 425 million dollars, requires Saipan to lay a total length of about 153 kilometers of submarine pipelines in the Black Sea waters of Türkiye, and build supporting submarine facilities to connect the newly discovered Goktpe deepwater gas field.

The core challenge of the project lies in the water depth - the Goktepe gas field is located in an ultra deep water area with a depth of about 2200 meters, which puts forward extreme requirements for pipeline laying technology, equipment capabilities, and underwater engineering accuracy. Saipan will use its flagship pipeline laying ship "Castorone" to carry out this task. This contract forms a coherent project management with the Sakaria Phase III main contract signed in September 2025, and plans to launch offshore operations in the second half of 2027, reflecting the full lifecycle management capability of complex mega projects and showcasing the concentrated strength of Saipan ultra deepwater engineering.

Integrated Capability Dingding Market

This series of orders at the end of the year is not an isolated event. Just a few days before announcing these three contracts, Saipan had just won the bid with China National Offshore Oil Corporation for the COMP5 section of the Qatar Northern Gas Field Capacity Maintenance Project, worth up to 4 billion US dollars. Saipan is responsible for most of the EPCI work worth approximately $3.1 billion, including two giant compression units with a total weight of approximately 136000 tons. Keywords: infrastructure construction, engineering construction strategy, news

These intensive orders collectively reveal several key trends in the current offshore market: firstly, there are still huge investments in maintaining and expanding oil and gas production capacity, especially natural gas production capacity, in regions such as the Middle East and the Black Sea. Secondly, as projects become increasingly complex and integrated, owners are more inclined to choose giants like Symbian with "integrated" capabilities (from design, manufacturing to installation, operation and maintenance) for general contracting cooperation. Finally, companies with strong technological fleets, global manufacturing bases, and long-term customer relationships have increasingly evident advantages in competition. Saipan is firmly seizing this recovery opportunity and consolidating its leadership position as a top global offshore contractor through the synergy of its five major business segments, including asset services and energy transmission. (This article is from the official website of Jian Dao www.seetao.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited, otherwise it will be prosecuted. Please indicate Jian Dao website+original link when reprinting.) Jian Dao website infrastructure column editor/Gao Xue