The substantial fall in oil prices has weakened the onshore market, causing project delays and a focus on reducing costs for pipeline owners, said an industry expert.

“Despite this, the delays we have observed have a different complexion to other oilfield sectors and have been limited in large part to the North America region,” added Matt Loffman, author of the 8th edition of the World Onshore Pipelines Market Forecast 2015-2019 from Douglas-Westwood (DW), a leading provider of market research and consulting services to the energy industry worldwide.

Onshore pipeline expenditure is expected to grow modestly to $220 billion between 2015 and 2019, according to the report.

“This represents a 14 per cent increase on the previous five-year period,” Loffman noted.

“The research considers the prospects for the onshore pipelines construction business and values the future markets through to 2019 by key component, region, pipeline type and diameter.

“In general, the onshore pipeline construction market is fairly insulated from commodity price fluctuations when taking a global perspective. There are delays relating to a reduction in the rate of growth in major non-OECD economies in addition to falling US unconventional production figures. However these are offset to a large extent by major transmission lines and demand growth in the Middle East and Latin America,” Loffman concluded. – TradeArabia News Service