Middle East Industry
Kuwaiti drilling contractor carries a KD 349 million contracted backlog into the second half
By Staff Writer | 16 August 2026
Revenue for the six months to 30 June reached KD 18.1 million, up 34.4 per cent, with net profit close to double the prior year and a rig fleet that has grown from four units to twenty in under four years.
Action Energy Company, the Kuwaiti upstream services contractor listed on the premier market of the Kuwait exchange, held an earnings webcast on 15 August to set out its results for the first half of 2026. It reported revenue of KD 18.1 million, up 34.4 per cent year on year, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of KD 9.0 million, up 28.3 per cent, and net profit of KD 4.4 million, up 96.6 per cent.
The number the company put in front of the figures was its order book. Its contracted backlog stands at KD 349 million, which it describes as more than double the level of a year earlier, and which it states is denominated in Kuwaiti dinars and runs across multiple years.
Our contracted backlog of KD 349 million remains the clearest indicator of the Company's strength. More than double its level a year ago, it provides long-term visibility over future revenue through contracted, Kuwaiti dinar-denominated business extending across multiple years.
Eng Rawaf Bourisli, Vice Chairman of Action Energy
The fleet, and where the growth is meant to come from
The company states that it has gone from operating four rigs to twenty at full utilisation in less than four years, and puts the average age of that fleet at 3.07 years against approximately 15.9 years for Kuwait as a whole. On its own account the next phase rests on three things: continuing to serve the national oil companies in Kuwait, widening its oilfield services offering, and taking selected work elsewhere in the region.
The backlog figure is contracted work, not a pipeline of opportunities. The company has not published the contract by contract split behind it.
On the services side it names prequalifications already secured in electric submersible pumps, slickline, non-destructive testing inspection and once-through steam generators. Prequalification is not an award, and the company does not say how much of the KD 349 million sits in those scopes rather than in drilling. Its stated market case rests on the Kuwaiti target of raising crude oil production capacity to 4.0 million barrels a day by 2035, and on continued rig demand across the region through 2030.
Jainuddin Jhabuawala, General Manager, Finance, told the webcast that the flotation had strengthened the balance sheet and that the company had kept what he called a de-risked and flexible position capable of funding future growth.
What a local currency order book changes for a subcontractor
For anyone selling into this chain, the currency point is the one worth reading twice. A backlog contracted in Kuwaiti dinars, with a customer base of national oil companies, moves the exchange risk off the contractor and leaves it with the party that prices in another currency. A supplier quoting in dollars or euros against a dinar denominated main contract carries that gap itself unless the subcontract says otherwise, and the place to settle it is the currency and payment clause rather than a covering letter.
The fleet age figure matters for a different reason. Rig availability decides drilling programmes, and drilling programmes decide when civil, mechanical and electrical follow-on packages can start. A contractor whose completion obligations sit downstream of a well being handed over should be checking what its contract says about a delay that originates upstream of its own works, because a young fleet at full utilisation is a fleet with no spare capacity in it.
Three things are worth watching from here. Whether the backlog converts on the stated multi-year profile or is weighted to its later years. Whether the four prequalified service lines turn into awards, since a prequalification that never converts is a cost rather than a position. And whether utilisation holds at twenty rigs, because the company's margin case is built on the fleet working rather than on the fleet existing.