Turbulent times in the oil & gas sector will be the backdrop for this year's two premier offshore industry events – Houston's annual Offshore Technology Conference in May and Aberdeen's SPE Offshore Europe gathering in September. But that's…
China constantly shakes many of the world's beliefs, for better or worse, from its economic growth to trade to human rights. There is no doubt that China will become before not too long the world's dominant economic power. It also provides an additional…
‘Securing Safe, Smart, Sustainable Supply' is the highly alliterative theme for this year's Offshore Europe conference, to be held in Aberdeen 6-8 September. It will be chaired by Amec chief executive Samir Brikho.--It is not just about having energy…
Exploration and production at greater depths and a heightened emphasis on safety could mean even bigger roles for ROVs in offshore operations. Experts say the machines are not just up for the challenge, but ahead of the game. Russell McCulley reports…
The old rivalry between ROV pilots and divers appears to be breaking down, as both sides recognize the considerable benefits of working together. Russell McCulley referees.--'When I started, it was taboo to even get near an ROV,' says Michael Johnson…
With subsea infrastructure getting into ever deeper waters, umbilicals have had to shoulder an expanding load. Jennifer Pallanich talks to five leading SURF sector players about how the industry's thermoplastic and steel tube umbilicals have evolved…
A week after the long-awaited release of a presidential commission’s report on the Macondo disaster, US Interior secretary Ken Salazar announced the latest moves in the reorganization of the agency that oversees offshore oil & gas activities…
Floating systems consultant Peter Lovie pinpoints some of the perils of speculative FPS building and wonders if the practice may now have become just too risky for operators or contractors to consider.In the service vessel business and in the…
Following lengthy qualification trials in Norway, MAN Diesel & Turbo has been selected as the supplier of the subsea gas compressors for the Åsgard field. According to field operator Statoil, in comparative trials carried out at the operator's K-Lab testing facility at Kårsto…
A new international offshore contracting giant, with a market cap above $5.5 billion, backlog of $5.3 billion and over 12,000 employees, came into being last month with the combination of Acergy SA and Subsea 7 Inc. Meg Chesshyre looks at the rationale behind this high-profile marriage…
Companies across the offshore supply spectrum used the recent downturn to take stock – either out of necessity or for strategic reasons – in order to reposition themselves for when the upturn finally kicked in. OE looks at one such company,…
Marathon Oil is spinning off its downstream business to create the upstream Marathon Oil Corporation, to be based in Houston, and the downstream Marathon Petroleum Corporation, based in Ohio. Marathon Oil will operate and report through three segments: exploration & production…
Distributed temperature sensing data is now often the first port of call when identifying production issues, not the last resort as it had been prior to the adoption of the latest user-friendly data management packages. Tendeka's Garth Naldrett explains why…
With a year of incident-free operation in West Africa under their belt, Steve Douglas and David Brittan reckon combining the first CrewZer-class vessel with the latest Frog transfer devices has produced arguably the industry's safest crew supply…
Field development prospects on the UK Continental Shelf are gathering momentum again, with Nexen (Golden Eagle, Blackbird), Chrysaor (Solan) and BG (Blake increased production) firming up North Sea project and environmental impact details in recent weeks…