Saipem: no damage to Castorone ship, repairs underway. Share halts fall (+1%)

Good news for Saipem, rebounding from a very bad day on the stock market on January 30 (-12%) after the accident without injuries on the pipe-laying ship Castorone off the waters of Western Australia during pipe-laying operations. In the aftermath of the event, Saipem announced that the group's flagship - a 325-metre-long Pipe Layer built in 2012 and currently sailing under the flag of the Bahamas - did not suffer any damage: a localised pipeline lesion - the company explained in a note - during laying is an event that can happen, and as such Saipem has approved procedures and resources in place for intervention and repairs.

Initial assessments indicate that the cause of the accident could be a software anomaly under investigation. In addition to the investigation, plans are underway to repair the main line with safety as a priority. Shortly after the company's announcement, Saipem's share price stopped falling (+1%).

The negative impact of the accident on Saipem's share price is also linked to the vessel's key role in Saipem's activities, including the award in January 2023 of two offshore contracts totalling around USD 900 million. The first contract - in partnership with Aker Solutions do Brasil - was awarded by Total Energies, for the LAPA Southwest (LAPA SW) development project, a deepwater oil field in the Santos Basin in the South Atlantic, 270 kilometres off the coast of São Paulo, Brazil.

The other contract was awarded to Saipem by Equinor for the Irpa Pipeline project. The project, located in deep water in the Norwegian Sea, consists of the installation of an 80km-long Pipe-in-Pipe pipeline that will connect the subsea production gauge of the Irpa field to the existing Aasta Hansteen platform. Offshore operations are planned for 2025 and will be carried out by the Castorone vessel.