Now in its 43rd year, the Offshore Technology Conference returns to Houston’s Reliant Park 30 April-3 May. Almost as old as the offshore industry itself, the annual gathering has thrived throughout an E&P era marked by peaks, valleys, tremendous…
Andrew McBarnet speculates whether evolving microseismic monitoring technology being harnessed for the US onshore shale gas revolution could end up offshore. The rapid development of US onshore shale gas must count as the most stunning turnaround ever in the country's energy prospects…
When a story becomes the story it may sell a few more newspapers for a couple of days but most editors know that this is not a good way to the future – unless of course ideologically driven or vested interest motives become barely disguised…
After a trillion-plus dollar stimulus package that seems to have fizzled, after forays towards ‘bipartisanship’ which often meant agree with him or nothing, and after seeing his approval ratings drop like a rock, US president Barack Obama unveiled…
The number and total value of US oil & gas mergers and acquisitions dipped slightly in 2Q 2011 over the same period last year, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study. But the average deal value for the largest transactions rose by 14%…
Earlier this year the refrain was ‘$5 natural gas forever', based on the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) annual outlook, which argued that natural gas prices will remain below $5 per million btu until 2022. The underlying rationale was growth in the ‘vast' US shale gas resource base…
Once in a while I would like to look inward and discuss technical advances in the industry or how things have evolved. In the case of hydraulic fracturing, the process has emerged as the premier production enhancement technique in oil and gas…
The current state of development of methane hydrate resources – ‘from Mallik to the Nankai Trough' – was examined by an international symposium in Japan late last year. Two of the participants, Professor Andrew Palmer and Simon Falser from the…
Merger and acquisition activity in the US oil & gas sector picked up steam 3Q 2010, despite ongoing uncertainty about business in the Gulf of Mexico, reported PricewaterhouseCoopers.For the three-month period ending 30 September, there were…
It is perhaps the biggest social and economic challenge of the world today: how will China acquire sufficient energy resources, of oil and perhaps even more important, natural gas, over the next several decades? China’s energy makeup is still quite primitive: 70% of China’s energy comes from coal…
Worries about the future of natural gas dominated proceedings as the SPE’s Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition made its international debut in Florence last month. Speakers focused on what the industry must do to meet burgeoning global energy demand…
In a ‘brutally costcompetitive environment,' KBR has been looking at multiple ways to provide its services at an increasingly lower cost, said KBR chairman, president and CEO William P ‘Bill' Lutt during the 2010 Rice Global E&C Forum.Lutt told…
Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker and peak oil alarmist who in recent years was a strong advocate of renewable energy, died on 8 August at his home near Rockland, Maine. He was 67.In the 2005 book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy…
Water shortages could pose as great a threat to energy security as political instability or terrorism, leading peak oil theorist Matt Simmons told delegates at the Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference in Seattle, Washington, last month…
Lower prices, weak demand and competition from vast onshore shale plays helped put a damper on offshore liquefied natural gas terminal projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Russell McCulley talks to companies that are bucking the trend and pushing through with plans for deepwater LNG ports…