courtesy BW Offshore Ltd.

With three years of order booms behind them, a “new model” of floating production finance and earnings looks set to keep contracts coming in for floating production companies, judging by a presentation relayed in Oslo Wednesday by BW Offfshore Ltd.

Years 2010, 2011 and 2012 could yet see order booms like record contract year 2006 (which saw 30 FPSO orders), but floating producers will henceforth look to help oil companies while trimming their own enormous risks — from that posed by competitors and contruction overruns, to the currency losses and shaky small-oil-company finance seen in recent months.

Key to survival appears to be leasing out their specialized ships and acting as supplier-contractor specialists to oil companies seen eventually owning the high-capital vessels. The old model was to assemble vast finance and a worldwide construction teams and then owning the floating producer.

BW Offshore presented a $279 million loss for the fourth-quarter of 2008 after large financial impairments were incurred. But earnings on chartered FPSOs look set to pick up dramatically and run to 2022.

In the meantime, a $3 billion order backlog of floating production with mostly national oil companies looks set to tide BW Offshore over until the “new model” of earnings and risk aversion can take hold.

Like its peers, BW is coming off two years when energy and shipping went from seeming predictable to being bogged down by financial woes and overburdened suppliers.

Hurt by a perception they’ll soon be forced to consolidate to survive, floating producers are gathered at the FPSO International conference in the Norwegian capital today.

Tags: BW Offshore