New Delhi: Engineers India Limited (EIL), the state-owned engineering consultancy, is pursuing oil and petroleum product pipeline work and strategic storage projects in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It expects an order pipeline of around USD 1 billion out of the two countries over the next two to three years. Atul Gupta, the company's Chairman and Managing Director, put that figure to the media in New Delhi on Friday, after EIL's 61st Annual General Meeting (AGM). The company has already registered its interest in developing some of those projects, he said.
Follow The PSUWatch Channel on WhatsApp
"Across these countries together, there could be very large investments in infrastructure. For the immediate future, there are already several projects and programmes in the pipeline, and we expect to be involved in some of them," Gupta said.
The spending Gupta is counting on traces back to the war. The conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States has damaged a number of oil facilities across the Gulf. It also closed the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that carries around 20 percent of the world's oil and gas supplies. Suppliers such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now examining infrastructure that would move crude around the strait instead of through it, so that supply holds when the route does not.
That build-out is the medium-term case. Closer in, the same war has thinned EIL's order flow from the region, with clients deferring decisions while they attend to damage.
"There has been slowdown in orders from the Gulf region as those countries are busy securing and restoring their installations," Gupta said.
EIL's push into the Gulf has been taking shape for some time. The company has made its Saudi Arabia office operational, and it has entered a long-term in-Kingdom services agreement with Saudi Aramco.
Follow PSU Watch on LinkedIN
The opportunity comes on the back of EIL's strongest year. The company posted profit after tax of Rs 638.74 crore in 2025-26, its highest, growing nearly 37 percent over the year before. Total income rose to Rs 4,058.86 crore from Rs 3,198 crore in 2024-25, with profit before tax at Rs 833.50 crore and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) at Rs 877.15 crore.
Fresh business through the year came to Rs 7,978 crore, and that took the order book to an all-time high of Rs 15,109 crore as on March 31. Work won abroad did most of the lifting. Overseas consultancy brought in around Rs 4,929 crore of the year's fresh business, or close to 62 percent of everything secured.
EIL's international work now runs across Nigeria, Mongolia, Guyana, the UAE, Bahrain, Algeria and Kuwait. Nigeria has been the deepest of those markets. Having executed the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Project there, the company went on to secure the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) mandate for the Dangote Train-2 expansion. It has also taken a separate project management consultancy and EPCM assignment on a new four-train fertiliser project in the country.
(PSU Watch is India's Business News centre that places the spotlight on PSUs, Bureaucracy, Defence and Public Policy. 👉 Click to join our channel now: PSUWatch WhatsApp Channel. Prefer LinkedIn? Follow PSU Watch on LinkedIN. Click to stay connected on Twitter here and stay updated.)