Much ado has been made over Mexico in the last three years as the country turned a new page and opened its industry to foreign investment. PECOM 2016 crowd. Images from OE Staff. Make no mistake…
NSRI (National Subsea Research Initiative), the technology arm of Subsea UK, held a series of series of “hackathons,” which brought industry, technology developers, universities and research institutes together to brainstorm possible technological solutions…
In 1975, the UK’s national oil company (NOC), BNOC, was formed. It didn’t last long, while others are still going strong. Alex Kemp takes a look at the whys and wherefores of NOCs. National oil companies have been in existence for many years…
Switzerland-headquartered Sulzer is promoting single-phase boosting supported by subsea separation. The industrial engineering and manufacturing firm launched itself into the subsea separation business in 2014, when it bought Ascom and ProLabNL…
Quest Offshore assesses the drilling, subsea, and marine construction dynamics affecting of one of the world’s pre-eminent deepwater basins amid the downturn. The Gulf of Mexico has long been a region of critical importance to the global deepwater industry…
The Energy Industries Council’s project tracking database EICDataStream is currently tracking 85 active and future projects in the US Gulf of Mexico, in various stages of development, and the outlook for 2017 and beyond is positive. Major…
Ken Richardson and Ian Simpson, of ABS, review current deepwater drillship designs and technologies. Friede & Goldman’s DS3810 deepwater drillship design, which is being evaluated by ABS for AIP…
Meg Chesshyre reports on how mini ROV systems have advanced significantly and, thanks to their size, they can get up close and personal. Deep Trekker’s DTG2. Images from Deep Trekker. “It’s not just a camera in the water anymore…
Earlier this year, Marathon Oil’s North Sea business was issued with an improvement notice after its failure to inspect the integrity of an 8in high-pressure pipe on its Brae Alpha facility. A failure in the pipe on 26 December 2016 resulted…
There’s a war on: who can produce the fastest inspection ROV with the highest quality data? Elaine Maslin explains. The Surveyor Interceptor. Image from MMT. Is it a bird, is it a plane…
While it offers a theoretically coherent concept, subsea processing can seem fragmented. Elaine Maslin spoke to Intecsea about how the company views the broader picture. Statoil’s Åsgard project…
Weatherford’s Snorre Lutnes examines managed pressure drilling applications across key regions. MPD deployment. Images from Weatherford. Once reserved as a last resort for wells defined as undrillable…
Structural integrity monitoring should be a lifecycle tool and could make jackup moves safer. Meg Chesshyre reports from Oceanology International. Jackups. Photo by staff. A…
Mark Smith, Staci Stephenson and Brent Fergurson, of Oceaneering International, show how NASA’s neutral buoyancy lab is helping cut costs and cut risks involved in subsea initiatives. Deployment of MIL 27 ROV at the NBL…
Anyone that reads this column every month will know that there have been some common themes to my take on the oil and gas industry this year. Welsh. First, is my criticism of…