Manifa, other projects on track-Halliburton execs

By Anna Driver

HOUSTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Halliburton Co's (HAL.N) national oil company clients, including Saudi Arabia's Aramco and Brazil's Petrobras (PETR4.SA), have so far not changed their 2009 spending plans with the oilfield services firm, company executives said.

In April, Halliburton said it had been awarded a three-year contract to help develop Saudi Aramco's massive $9 billion Manifa offshore project. The field is expected to have a peak capacity of 900,000 thousand barrels of oil per day, with first production targeted for 2012.

But a swoon in crude oil and natural gas prices has sparked talk that the project will be delayed or even canceled, a notion that Halliburton dispelled.

"The (Manifa) project is going, and we have not heard from Aramco anything different," Ahmed Lotfy, president of Halliburton's Eastern Hemisphere business, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Still, U.S. analysts who attended Halliburton's investor meeting this week said the company indicated the project would now be drilled over a longer period of time, a move that will likely pinch the company's 2009 revenue.

At Manifa, Halliburton has been contracted to help Aramco drill 93 wells offshore Saudi Arabia.

In Latin America Halliburton said national oil company customers Petrobras, Venezuela's PDVSA and Mexico's Pemex [PEMX.UL] were also on plan.

"It's one of our largest growth regions," Jim Brown, president of Halliburton's Western Hemisphere operations, said of Latin America. "Their 2009 plans have not changed at all at this point."

Halliburton said in January that it had won a three-year, $683 million contract from Pemex to manage the drilling and completion of 58 onshore wells in southern Mexico.

The sharp selloff in commodities and fallout from the global financial crisis have prompted energy companies to adapt a more cautious stance on exploration and production spending.

Halliburton Chief Executive Dave Lesar said on Wednesday that he expected some speculative drilling projects to be delayed a year or two, and major projects that have already been started to proceed as planned.

Shares of Halliburton, which has corporate headquarters in Dubai and Houston, fell more than 6 percent to $15.10 on the New York Stock Exchange. That decline was in line with a 6 percent drop in the Philadelphia Stock Exchange index of oilfield service companies. (Reporting by Anna Driver; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)