Ramboll spreads its American wings

Engineering firm Ramboll is bringing its Danish values to its newly acquired American businesses. Meg Chesshyre sets out the details.

When Danish engineering consultancy Ramboll acquired Houston-based Excel Engineering in October 2013 the move gave it an entry into the US oil and gas market—and beyond.

Excel Engineering has been operating in the Houston oil and gas market for 20 years, and worked on projects globally, completing more than 1400 projects. The acquisition added about 50 American oil and gas experts to Ramboll and new projects in the Mexican Gulf of Mexico, including brownfield modification work on Pemex’s Abkatun-D platform in the Tabasco field in the Bay of Campeche.

The contract, completed in 2014, was for detailed design work needed to add two gas compression trains to Abkatun-D. Both are now operational.

Two other recent contracts for Ramboll have been for PDVSA on the PetroUrica joint venture in the Orinoco oil belt in Venezuela and for Petrobras on SAL/Itau in Bolivia. The PetroUrica project involved the detailed design of a modularized plant to blend heavy crude with a diluent and pump it to upgrading facilities. The SAL/Itau project involved the detailed design of an extensive gas compression facility to supply gas in to the Brazilian gas domestic markets.

“These are pretty typical of our projects,” says Crispin Richards, Ramboll Oil & Gas US president since April 2014. “We have excellent engineers and effective project leadership. It means we are able to adapt rapidly to evolving client objectives. We can also furnish a whole team that speaks Spanish, which is good for our South America clients.” Ramboll is also addressing the African market from Houston. “We do support for the African market. A lot of it is maintenance driven.”

The Houston-based organization, now 60 strong, has been renamed Ramboll Oil & Gas US, and is part of Ramboll’s 1000-strong oil and gas division.

Richards, who took over as president from Excel Engineering founder Mostafa Jamal when the latter retired in 2014, says that the integration into the Ramboll organization is now complete and that the merger has gone very well. He is enthusiastic about Ramboll’s Danish values. The international consultancy was founded in Copenhagen in 1945.

“They have an enduring business model with a strong sense of teamwork and community. The whole Ramboll Oil & Gas leadership team gets together on video once a month to coordinate our global delivery platform,” he says.

In a further US corporate move last December, Ramboll acquired the US-based global consultancy, ENVIRON, adding more than 1500 environmental and health-science specialists in 21 countries. The acquisition positions Ramboll among the top 10 leading environmental consultancies globally with 2700 experts working within environment, health and water divisions, worldwide, and a total staff of nearly 12,500 employees in 35 countries.

The US is Ramboll’s fourth largest market. Richards sees natural synergies between Ramboll and the newly acquired environmental arm. “They dovetail nicely into each other,” he says.

Also, the shale gas market is an area of potential collaboration. Ramboll, through Excel Engineering, has considerable shale gas experience, and is now exporting this expertise into Europe. Excel Engineering has been involved with shale gas since the pioneering days.

Abkatun-D US fabricator Kiewit was contracted by Dresser-Rand to design and build two compression train modules (pictured, images from Ramboll) for the Abkatun-D platform in the Mexican Gulf of Mexico. Kiewit awarded Ramboll (then Excel Engineering) the engineering and drafting for the two new modules.

The multi-deck modules each weigh about 1160-tonne. The heart of each of module are two GE LM2500+ gas turbines each driving a Dresser-Rand VECTRA 40G compressor. Each module can compress up to 144 MMcf/d of sour gas (H2S and CO2). Ramboll’s work included the structural, piping, instrumentation and electrical design of the modules and incorporation of the balance of plant facilities into the modules. The balance of plant equipment included scrubbers, air coolers, firewater piping, seal gas and fuel gas conditioning, relief systems, and interconnecting electrical equipment and instrumentation.

The 50,000-hour brownfield scope of work was particularly challenging due to space constraints, Richards says. For example, access had to be provided to the turbines powering the compression systems that were located in the middle of the modules. This involved building a special trolley tracking system. “We adapted pretty well on the fly,” he says.