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Over in Singapore\u2019s Tuas industrial district, workers are assembling a giant floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) unit, part of the infrastructure that separates crude oil from what\u2019s pulled up from offshore reservoirs. Next to it is a giant Goliath crane, which can lift up to 30,000 tons in a single heave; a gleaming white Royal Caribbean cruise ship sits just a few docks away.<\/p>\n
This particular FPSO vessel, built by Singapore\u2019s Seatrium, No. 42 on the Fortune Southeast Asia 500, will soon be bound for Brazil and its state-owned oil giant, Petrobras. It took around three to four years to get the ship completed, a lifetime compared to how quickly most goods get produced.<\/p>\n
Seatrium\u2019s most recent contract with Petrobras, a deal worth approximately 11 billion Singapore dollars ($8.2 billion) for two all-electric FPSOs, was signed back in May 2024, with first delivery expected in 2029. Much has changed since the contract was first signed. Trump\u2019s \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs rewired global supply chains, and the Iran war, with its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, upended the entire conversation around energy, particularly in Asia, which sources much of its oil and gas through that narrow chokepoint.<\/p>\n
Chris Ong, Seatrium\u2019s CEO, sees the Iran conflict sharpening what specialists call the energy trilemma, or the trade-off between energy security, affordable supply, and environmental sustainability. \u201cThe situation is now even worse because of the destruction of supply, which is still not fully priced in,\u201d Ong says. \u201cPeople don\u2019t understand; they have been swung between different stories every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet if oil prices stay elevated, Ong thinks that will unlock new offshore projects around the world. \u201cI think a lot of projects would come online if the price per barrel were around $100.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A builder and a businessman\u2019<\/p>\n
Seatrium itself is barely three years old, though its DNA stretches back to Singapore\u2019s colonial-era naval docks, later converted by the newly independent government into commercial shipyards. The company itself was formed in 2023 when Sembcorp Marine absorbed its rival, Keppel Offshore and Marine. Sembcorp Marine was contending with COVID-era disruptions and a legal hangover from corruption investigations in Brazil; Keppel, meanwhile, had decided to reinvent itself as an asset manager and was eager to shed its manufacturing business.<\/p>\n
As Ong explains it, Singapore couldn\u2019t sustain two shipyards competing for the same scarce land, talent, and capital. \u201cWe were competing against each other when there\u2019s bigger competition in China and Korea,\u201d he says. The fight over talent had grown particularly fierce: \u201cWe were competing with data centers, other builders, even our own customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former junior engineer, Ong spent nearly three decades in the industry, rising through both predecessors before taking over the merged group. Ong knew both companies, and so knew how to stitch the two together. \u201cYou are no longer red or green,\u201d he recalled telling staff, referring to Keppel\u2019s and Sembcorp\u2019s corporate colors. \u201cYou are now electric blue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seatrium posted a 1.9 billion Singapore dollar ($1.5 billion) net loss in 2023, partly because of substantial write-downs on non-core assets and obsolete inventory.<\/p>\n
Under Ong, the company has turned itself around. The company reported 11.5 billion Singapore dollars ($9.0 billion) in revenue for 2025, up 24% from the year before. Net profit more than doubled to 324 million Singapore dollars ($254 million). Oil and gas accounted for just over 70% of revenue, offshore wind just under 20%, and repairs and upgrades for clients ranging from the Singapore Navy to Royal Caribbean\u2019s cruise fleet at roughly 7%.<\/p>\n
Ong credits a supply chain overhaul he branded \u201cOne Seatrium\u201d for the turnaround. Seatrium now operates like a global manufacturer: components are built wherever it makes most sense and then brought together for final integration, usually in Singapore. \u201cThat allows us to scale the order book.\u201d Ong explains.<\/p>\n
A decades-old relationship with Brazil<\/p>\n
Seatrium\u2019s relationship with Brazil reaches back to the 1980s, predating the country\u2019s oil boom. \u201cFortunately, our predecessors were very farsighted,\u201d Ong says. \u201cThey realized that if you weren\u2019t in Brazil, you wouldn\u2019t be part of its growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Seatrium has had a \u201clove-hate relationship\u201d with Brazil, in Ong\u2019s words. Both of Seatrium\u2019s predecessor companies were ensnared in Operation Car Wash, Brazil\u2019s sweeping anti-corruption investigation that eventually consumed much of the country\u2019s political and business establishment. In July 2025, Seatrium agreed to pay approximately $190 million in fines to Brazilian and Singaporean authorities to settle the case, finally closing the matter.<\/p>\n
Ong says the experience drove the company to build \u201cone of the most structured compliance programs\u201d in the industry. \u201cThe question was, after Operation Car Wash, do we continue our presence in Brazil? First our compliance culture had to be right, then we had to determine whether this was the right geography to focus on our value-add to the energy landscape. And the answer was yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In September 2025, the company handed over the P-78 FPSO, with a production capacity of 180,000 barrels of oil per day, to Petrobras, the first in a growing line of Brazilian vessels. The two new FPSOs under construction, P-84 and P-85, will be all-electric platforms designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% per barrel.<\/p>\n
Seatrium is also embedded in Guyana, which has gone from producing no oil in 2019 to nearly 900,000 barrels per day in 2025, and potentially 1.7 million barrels per day by 2030, according to ExxonMobil. The country\u2019s oil windfall has tripled GDP per capita since 2020, transforming a nation of roughly 800,000 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all started when we realized that Guyana is also a former British colony,\u201d Ong says. \u201cGuyana and Singapore felt almost like siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seatrium\u2019s other bet: Offshore wind<\/p>\n
While fossil fuels drive the bulk of Seatrium\u2019s revenue, the company is also positioning itself as a builder of offshore wind infrastructure, including installation vessels, floating turbine carriers, and the high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) substations that transmit power back to shore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ong sees wind as a natural extension of the company\u2019s engineering DNA. \u201cYou have your installation jack-ups, your foundations get bigger, and the whole infrastructure gets more complex. That complexity in engineering, proprietary technology, and execution excellence all fall in line with what we do in offshore oil and gas,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seatrium has been involved in offshore wind since 2012, when it built its first wind turbine installation vessel. Today, it says it has contributed to projects representing nearly 16 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity worldwide.<\/p>\n
Europe remains its strongest market. In December 2025, Seatrium and GE Vernova won a contract from Dutch transmission operator TenneT to deliver BalWin5, a 2.2-gigawatt HVDC connection linking North Sea wind farms to Germany\u2019s onshore power grid. The project,\u00a0 enough to power roughly 2.75 million households, is expected to be commissioned in 2032. \u201cEurope needs to become independent from Russian gas,\u201d Ong says, \u201cand Germany has said it will not go back to nuclear.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S., by contrast, has proven a more treacherous market. Trump scrapped subsidies for wind power, suspended issuing permits for new projects, and even agreed to pay nearly $1 billion for TotalEnergies to surrender its East Coast leasers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe originally thought the U.S. would be the next major destination that will grow,\u201d Ong says. \u201cBut it\u2019s still very nascent, very state-driven rather than federal-driven.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seatrium has had its own U.S. drama. Last year, its partner Maersk canceled an order for a wind turbine installation vessel bound for the Empire Wind 1 project, citing construction delays. The vessel, at the time, was 98.9% complete. The case went to arbitration, and eventually Seatrium delivered the vessel in February.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long-term bets<\/p>\n
Shipbuilding has become one of the most securitized industries in the world over the past two years, particularly as the U.S. chafes under China\u2019s dominance of commercial shipbuilding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seatrium doesn\u2019t make container ships, and so avoids the most prominent debates over shipbuilding. But Ong knows the company can\u2019t avoid security questions\u2014in part because the company\u2019s clients include the Singaporean, U.S. and U.K. navies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a project is sensitive to being built in China, we simply don\u2019t build it there,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have the flexibility to choose. Our Seatrium \u2018arsenal of capacity\u2019 gives us a very unique proposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seatrium remains closely tied to Singapore, which has long tried to take a more neutral role in world affairs, maintaining close security ties with the U.S. and close economic ties with China. Temasek, Singapore\u2019s state investment company, holds a 36% stake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That positioning extends to Seatrium\u2019s longest-range bets: floating nuclear power plants and floating data centers. Onshore projects can get snarled in land permitting issues, political blowback, and policy volatility; offshore projects, in contrast, can just get moved somewhere else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilding offshore energy infrastructure can actually be faster than building on land,\u201d Ong says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Fortune\u2019s \u201cAsia Agenda\u201d column, released twice a month, we speak with Asia\u2019s top business leaders about how they are building for the future and the lessons they\u2019ve drawn from leading companies in one of the world\u2019s fastest growing and most dynamic regions. Explore all of our profiles here.<\/p>\n
#Singapores #Seatrium #emerged #messy #merger #billion #business<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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