The newly established contract database findcontracts.no, and Statoil’s own website, will now make it easier for vendors to gain an overview of plans and contracts.
The contract portals will provide more openness in relation to the industry’s needs and contribute to greater predictability for suppliers.
The findcontracts.no website was formally launched by the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy Ola Borten Moe at the ONS in Stavanger in August. He noted that the website will help suppliers and the market to connect more efficiently. And the industry considers this a positive measure:
“IKM hopes findcontracts.no will become a tool to help us maintain an overview of which contracts will be awarded by Statoil in the near future. We currently spend quite a lot of time on this, in part because we don’t want to miss out on opportunities. Our company provides many niche services, which makes our work very challenging. Small niche companies are much more vulnerable than major players such as Aibel, Aker, Halliburton and Odfjell,” says Ståle Kyllingstad, general manager of IKM and board member in the Federation of Norwegian Industries.
“This will be a cost-saver for the supplier industry, and will be beneficial for small and new companies. It’s hard for them to follow what is happening. So – good initiative!”
Eivind Nordeide, responsible for sales and contracts in the engineering department in the company Axess, also welcomes the initiative.
“It will be easier for project managers and department managers to make long-term plans. At the same time, this will increase competition, so we need to bring our best game. I have instructed our managers to keep track of findcontracts.no. It might help us specialise in some disciplines instead of aiming for many different assignments. This way we can also increase the quality of our work,” says Nordeide.
Openness and predictability
Jon Arnt Jacobsen, chief procurement officer in Statoil, notes that the petroleum industry depends on a competitive supplier industry for the increasing activity level in the future.
“It is important to Statoil to facilitate openness and predictability which enables vendors to invest in expertise, capacity, technology and a local presence. A database such as this can help improve the supplier industry’s overview of existing and upcoming activities in the market,” says Jacobsen.
Between 60 and 95 per cent of the content in Statoil’s deliveries comes from the approxiomately 12 000 vendors that currently carry out assignments for the company. The contract database will enable potential new suppliers to gain a better overview of possible upcoming assignments.
“This can be particularly useful for small and medium-sized companies. It will be easier for them to position themselves and create alliances which will enable them to bid on assignments for Statoil. It has also been important to us that this was initiated by the Navitas and PetroArctic supplier networks, with which we have a close and good cooperation,” Jacobsen says.
Statoil has already added more than 150 ongoing, upcoming or awarded contracts to the database. The contracts each have a value of NOK 50 million or more.
Statoil is on net
Statoil has helped establish the new contract database, both with financial support and marketing and board expertise. Findcontracts.no will be a website for the entire oil and gas industry, and is also supported by the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF), the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE) and Shell.
Statoil also publishes its own contracts on statoil.com, so all vendors who search on the company’s own website will have the contract information easily available.
