According to a recent study, daily offshore oil & gas production, which currently stands about 43 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), is forecast to grow to 53 million barrels of BOE in 2010. That growth should drive the industry annual expenditure from $193 billion in 2006 to $248 billion in 2010.

“What’s more, considerable growth is forecast for all forms of deep water production facilities, but especially floating production systems and subsea production and processing hardware. Subsea systems are also expected to attract an increasingly larger part of the shallow water offshore spend as marginal development programmes escalate,” the report stated.

That’s where our Buzz Stock of the Day– Trico Marine Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRMA) comes in.

The Woodlands, TX-based company. through its subsidiaries, provides subsea and marine support vessels to the offshore oil and gas industry. It operates in three segments: Subsea Services, Subsea Trenching and Protection, and Towing and Supply.

The Subsea Services segment provides technology oriented subsea services, including inspection, maintenance, and repair services; survey and light construction support; decommissioning; onshore engineering work; post processing of survey data; and associated reporting. The Subsea Trenching and Protection segment offers subsea trenching and protection services for the burial of subsea transmission systems. This segment’s customers are primarily within the offshore oil and gas, power (electricity transmission systems), telecommunications (intercontinental and regional systems), and military industries.

In early February the company announced new contract awards and extensions valued at around $80 million. All of the contracts were with Trico Marine’s subsea services company, DeapOcean AS, or its subsea protection company, CTC Marine. In fact, about three-quarters of Trico Marine’s business in Q4 came from its subsea business.

“Our fourth quarter EPS met expectations but the more important point is that 2008 marked the transformation of Trico from an OSV operator to an international subsea services provider with our acquisitions of DeepOcean and CTC Marine,” said Trico Marine’s chairman and chief executive, Joseph Compofelice.

In a conference call with analysts, the company stated its CTC division is likely to do well and meet expectations throughout 2009 largely because of Trico Marine’s strategy to geographically expand CTC’s footprint into stronger markets including South East Asia and Mexico, and generate a larger portion of business from military contracts.

As of Dec. 2008, Trico Marine had $95 million in cash and $712 million in net debt. During the fourth quarter of 2008, the Company converted $22 million of convertible debt into equity and drew down $30 million under its credit facilities.

Most recently, Trico rejected the board nominations of two executives from Kistefos AG, a Norweigan private equity company that holds about 22 percent of Trico’s outstanding stock. In a response to one of the two executives, Trico stated that if the nominations were approved, Kistefos would have 29 percent control of the board, exceeding the 25 percent or less mandated by the Jones Act, the U.S. federal statute that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters between U.S. ports. Trico also said it will disregard the nominations if they are made at its upcoming annual meeting.

Join the discussion on Trico Marine Services on the company’s official Buzz Stock thread.