Foster Wheeler Ltd, provider of engineering and construction services to the energy industry, said its second-quarter profit more than tripled on a gain from an asbestos insurance settlement.

Net earnings were $106.2 million, or $1.53 per share, compared with $28.2 million, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier, the Bermuda-based company said.
Revenue rose 42 per cent to $745.3 million.
The asbestos settlement, received from an insurer, added $79.6 million to company profits. Foster Wheeler said it continues to litigate claims against other insurers as it works toward settlements.
Excluding the asbestos settlement, a charge of $12.3 million related to debt reduction, and stock option expenses, the company posted earnings of $43.1 million, or 61 cents per share, well above the average forecast of 41 cents per share among analysts polled by Reuters estimates.
The company’s order backlog grew to $2.84 billion at the end of the second quarter from $1.56 billion a year earlier. It booked new orders worth $908.7 million during the quarter, up 66 per cent from the year-earlier total.
Chairman, president and chief executive officer Raymond Milchovich singled out the company’s Global Engineering and Construction (E&C) Group for a 67 per cent rise in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) over the previous year’s quarter.
“The E&C markets we serve remain extremely strong,” he said, adding that capacity in the Global E&C Group increased by an additional eight per cent during the second quarter and will continue to expand as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, Foster Wheeler Italiana SpA has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction supervision contract by The Kuwait Olefins Company (TKOC) for a grassroots ethylene-glycol unit (EG2 Project) to be built at Shuaiba Industrial Area, Kuwait.
Foster Wheeler Italiana is part of Foster Wheeler’s Global Engineering and Construction Group.
TKOC is a joint-venture company with the majority shareholders being Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, and Dow Europe Holding, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.
The terms of the award were not disclosed and the contract will be included in Foster Wheeler’s first-quarter 2006 bookings.
The new world-scale EG2 unit, with a total capacity of 600,000 tonnes per year, is part of TKOC’s planned Olefins II ethylene and derivatives complex. It will use Union Carbide’s Meteor ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol process technology.
It is scheduled to be completed by the second quarter of 2008.
“We successfully completed a 340,000 tonnes per year ethylene glycol plant, part of the Equate I project, at the same location during the late 1990s,” said Umberto della Sala, chief executive officer, Foster Wheeler Global Engineering and Construction Group. “With this important award, we are very proud to be able to include The Kuwait Olefins Company among our repeat clients and we intend to deliver the same excellent performance for the EG2 Project.”
“The award of this contract builds on the success of the Equate I Project,” said Saad Al Shuwaib, chairman and managing director, PIC. “We are committed to building, with the help of Foster Wheeler, one of the safest and most efficient ethylene glycol plants in the world.”
Foster Wheeler Ltd said that one of its subsidiaries has been awarded a contract by Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd. (Gasco) to provide management services for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase of Gasco’s Habshan Gas Complex Expansion (HGCE) Project at Habshan.
Gasco, a subsidiary of Adnoc, is one of the largest gas processing companies in the world.
The management services will be undertaken by Foster Wheeler Energy Limited in the UK, previously awarded the contract to provide management services for the front-end engineering design and EPC contractor selection phases of this project.
The HGCE Project is a $1 billion expansion of the existing Habshan Gas Complex, one of the world’s largest gas processing plants.