McDermott International

McDermott International is an energy infrastructure engineering and construction contractor headquartered in Houston, Texas, with roots going back to 1923 as a drilling-rig builder in the Gulf of Mexico. The company delivers engineering, procurement, construction and installation work for offshore and onshore oil and gas, LNG, petrochemical and low-carbon energy projects, and it operates fabrication yards and marine installation vessels worldwide. In 2026 McDermott won two Middle East awards worth up to $1.75 billion combined: package 4 of ADNOC’s Umm Shaif integrated gas cap project offshore Abu Dhabi, worth more than $1 billion, and a contract from Eni Cyprus worth up to $750 million for the Cronos gas field. The Umm Shaif topside will rank among the heaviest offshore modules installed in the Middle East.

The scale of McDermott is easier to grasp from its assets than its revenue. The company states it runs eight marine construction vessels and five fabrication facilities, employs more than 30,000 people and operates in over 30 countries. Three of those vessels, DB32, DB50 and DLV2000, hold ISO 50001 energy management certification, which is an unusual credential to hold on floating plant and a reasonable proxy for how the fleet is run.

The company organises its work as integrated EPCI rather than as separate disciplines, which matters for anyone evaluating it as a partner. Engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction and installation sit under one contract, and the subsea and floating facilities business covers pipelines, risers, umbilicals and floating production systems as a single scope. On LNG it describes more than sixty years of involvement in liquefaction, and on the wider energy transition it has been at this in some form for over a century.

Low Carbon Pathways is the part of the business least associated with the McDermott name. It covers green hydrogen, green ammonia, carbon capture and sustainable aviation fuel, and it is being built on the same engineering and fabrication base as the offshore work rather than as a separate venture.

Recent awards illustrate the geography. In August 2026 the company took a mega offshore EPCI package for ADNOC at Umm Shaif, and in September 2026 a subsea contract for the Cronos development offshore Cyprus. Both are Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean gas projects, which is where much of the current offshore capital is concentrated.

Worth knowing for anyone checking references: McDermott completed a comprehensive restructuring process, and it is one of the few contractors of this size to have come through that and kept its fabrication and marine capability intact. Third-party databases still carry higher headcount and country figures than the company itself publishes, so the numbers above are the ones from McDermott’s own site.