The global market for floating production facilities for will enjoy a surprising boom over the next five years.

Owners of oil and gas assets are expected to lavish $100 billion in capital investments on such units, especially floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, a leading offshore market researcher has forecast.

Spending by oil companies and lead contractors on engineering, procurement and construction orders will be close to $112 billion over this five-year period, Xu Yun, senior analyst of Singapore-based Energy Maritime Associates (EMA) told an industry conference held in China on Monday.