Swiber rejection likely for B-127 pipelines
From being hot favourite to win it now looks like Swiber will be rejected in ONGC's re-issued tender for the $137m offshore Mumbai B-127 fields pipelines contract.
ONGC earlier wanted to award the contract to Swiber on a nomination basis but dropped these plans because of legal concerns. But there was still hope Swiber would win the open tender.
Sadly ONGC now feels Swiber has deviated drastically from its conditions by submitting a guarantee from its Singapore parent company and a net worth certificate from its Indian subsidiary. Unusually ONGC sought two rounds of clarifications - one on June 19 and the other on July 4 - creating suspicions it was stalling for time.
If Swiber is excluded the competition will narrow down to NPCC, Valentine Maritime with Supreme Offshore (India) and a consortium of SapuraKencana and TL Offshore. ONGC is targeting to issue the LoA by August 10 for this project, originally awarded in May 2013 to Punj Lloyd for $131.459m but re-tendered in June 2016 after Punj failed to complete it.
