BOEMRE director Michael Bromwich vows that deepwater drilling will return to the US Gulf of Mexico in the coming months, marking a return of exploration all but shut down after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But the oil & gas industry remains skeptical…
The mix of orders for all categories of drillings rigs continues, with Asia Pacific and Middle East shipyards and their overseas affiliates indicating a marked drift away from jackups and towards ever larger semisubmersibles and ultra-deepwater drillships…
Downhole memory tools specialist Omega Well Monitoring has launched the patents-pending Leakator, a tool optimised to locate leaks and monitor downhole flow.Omega said Leakator’s run-it-yourself capability means an existing on-site crew…
Despite a brief interruption post-Macondo, the rig newbuilding boom that started in 2005 is gathering momentum. Jennifer Pallanich talks to IHS about the latest trends in the drilling contractor market.One of the trends that Tom Kellock, Houston's head of consulting for IHS Petrodata…
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…
Combining Alternate Path shunt tube technology with concentric sandface completion systems is improving operational efficiency and economics while bringing new life to old offshore wells in Malaysian waters. Here, Schlumberger's Shahryar Saebi and Sergey…
OE's popular annual guide to oil & gas developments on the Northwest European Continental Shelf returns, fully updated.Operators in the UK sector of the North Sea were taken aback in March this year by UK Chancellor George Osborne's decision to raise the supplementary tax rate from 20% to 32%…
Baker Hughes' latest fracturing and stimulation vessel, the Blue Tarpon, is designed for operations in the Lower Tertiary play of the Gulf of Mexico. Katie Jernigan takes a look at the newest addition to the Baker Hughes fleet. Chouest owns…
Having established itself as the largest independent provider of onshore drilling services in Russia, Eurasia Drilling Company is now looking to have a bigger say in the developing CIS offshore market. David Morgan reports.Eurasia Drilling Company's…
The benefits of 'remote open close' technology are increasingly being sought out by operators as a new way to approach well interventions and completions, particularly in deepwater and subsea applications where rig time savings are critical…
The 5 million barrels of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico last year from the BP-operated deepwater Macondo well after a bad shear job played heavily on Radoil president Benton Baugh's mind. An inventor at heart, he knew there had to be a way to shear the unshearable…
Managed pressure drilling methodologies evolved over the years to address operational and economic problems inherent to conventional circulating systems that are open to the atmosphere. Most recently, the advanced closed-loop technology has swept into deepwater operations to help reduce risk…
Planning and information are key to the successful realization of Petrobras’ ambitious plans to hoist pre-salt production levels from the current 100,000b/d to 1.08 million b/d inside ten years. Jennifer Pallanich listened in as José Formigli…
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 AP Moller-Maersk Group's Maersk Drilling has signed a contract with the Keppel Fels yard in Singapore for the construction of two ultra-harsh environment, high-capacity jackup drilling rigs. The new rigs are targeting operations in water…