British oil services firm Petrofac warned that customers were delaying the award of contracts in its core Middle East market from this year to next, raising analysts’ concerns about its profit outlook.

Petrofac, which designs and builds oil and gas infrastructure, counts state-run national oil companies among its largest customers.

Chief financial officer Tim Weller said Petrofac was seeing a slowdown in awards in Iraq and Saudi Arabia in particular, where it is bidding for contracts to construct the pipelines and plants that help extract and process oil and gas.

“The economic situation may be one of the drivers but we’re not seeing awards or processes being cancelled,” Weller said.

The slowdown in contract awards was difficult to attribute to just one factor, he added. “The outlook statement is quite negative. They’re seeing delays in their core markets in the Middle East,” Numis analyst Sanjeev Bahl said.

“Management have suggested the potential for a flurry of larger awards post-Ramadan, which we believe is required to provide comfort in 2013 consensus forecasts,” Bahl added referring to the Muslim holy month which ended last week.

Petrofac said the contract delays would not impact its target of more than doubling 2010 recurring group earnings by 2015, a goal it was still confident of meeting.

Meanwhile, the international oil and gas service provider, said it has won a $100 million contract from Iraq’s South Oil Company (SOC) to provide offshore operations and maintenance services for its crude oil expansion project.

Petrofac said the 12-month contract, awarded to its Offshore Projects & Operations (OPO) business unit, will commence following a three-month mobilisation period.