A consortium led by a subsidiary of Aberdeen-based Wood Group has won an engineering services contract from Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco.

The deal, involving subsidiary Mustang Al-Hejailan, is thought to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

The five-year contract is for supplying management services to onshore and offshore oil and gas projects.

Mustang is one of only two foreign firms working with Saudi Aramco.

The other members of the bidding group are Saudi-owned engineering houses Dar E&C and PI-Consult. The three companies intend to combine their resources to form a leading engineering and services provider in Saudi Arabia.

Mustang Al-Hejailan currently employs 120 people in Saudi Arabia but intends to expand its workforce to 700 by the end of the year.

Last month, the Aberdeen oil services company said it intended to mount a push into new markets.

It plans to broaden its international presence with new locations including Angola, Brazil, Canada, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

The company made £156m in pre-tax profits in 2010 - a fall of 4% compared with the previous year.

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This news comes at the same time as an Invergordon-headquartered industrial cleaning and environmental waste management specialist secured a contract with Wood Group worth around £200,000.

The contract will see the MSIS Group deliver and hire out a specialist decontamination unit and ancillary equipment for a project onboard the Hess operated Triton FPSO (Floating production Storage and Offloading) vessel.

For the contract – which is expected to run for a minimum of 15 months – MSIS has designed and produced the NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material) decontamination unit, which will house a wash down area and treatment facility, in conjunction with Wood Group.

As part of the project, MSIS will also provide Wood Group with specialist personnel – including a RPS (Radioactive Protection Supervisor) – to undertake the decontamination of any equipment onboard the vessel that shows any traces of NORM.

Sales and marketing manager at the MSIS Group, Louise Green, commented: "This is a fantastic contract to have secured and we are delighted to again be working with Wood Group, which we have previously delivered highly successful projects for.

"In recent years we have continued to cement our position as leaders in the industrial cleaning of FPSOs and the securing of the contract further highlights our experience and expertise in this field.

"We look forward to working closely with Wood Group on this project and are confident the company will be extremely pleased with the unit and service they are set to receive."

The MSIS Group – made up of MS Industrial Services and ITS Environmental Services – consists of three primary divisions, Onshore, Offshore, and Equipment Rental and Sales.

The forming of the group was engineered after the opportunity was identified to cross-sell the businesses’ specialist services to the customer base of the respective divisions, and position the overall group as leaders of industrial cleaning and environmental waste management services to the oil and gas, utilities, distilleries, construction and civil engineering sectors.

(JG/GK)