Emerson Process Management Asia-Pacific, a unit of the world's largest marker of power equipment for oil companies, said its mainland business would grow 10 per cent to 15 per cent annually over the next few years as more local firms seek to build world-class oil and gas plants.
'Many oil and gas companies have a lot of interest in finding new resources in China to secure their supply of oil and gas,' said Michael Train, the president of Emerson Process. 'These companies, which partner Chinese firms, build a lot of power plants [in the mainland] and may need our support.'
Emerson Process provides its 'Foundation Fieldbus technology', a solution combining information technology equipment and measuring instruments, to power companies so that they can monitor their pipelines and factories with a single remote control room.
In 2003, Emerson Process was selected by Shanghai Secco Petrochemical, owned by Innovene and Shanghai Petrochemical Corp, as its digital automation partner.
'Shanghai Secco planned to build a 10-plant ethylene cracker complex for US$2.7 billion and our fee is only about US$50 million,' Mr Train said. 'Such a small amount of money can save 10 to 15 per cent of labour for the project.'
The company used 70 engineers to build a monitoring system for Shanghai Secco's project, which can produce 2.3 million tonnes of chemical products annually, within 27 months.