The UK offshore industry's new regulator is to be named the Oil and Gas Authority and will be based in Aberdeen, the UK's Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced in the Scottish city today. Rt Hon Danny Alexander MP also opened the…
CGG division Robertson Geolab has started a multi-client surface geochemistry (shallow core) survey to detect seafloor seepages of hydrocarbons in the South East Barents Sea. The survey's aim is to detect active petroleum systems in the area…
Two Total Marine Technology ROVs have just passed deepwater acceptance tests to 3000m in the North Atlantic Ocean with perfect scores. The Typhoon MK2 ROVs are now on their way to Brazil as part of a five-year contract with Petrobras. In total…
Premier Oil's central North Sea Catcher field development plan has been approved by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. The Catcher area is expected to produce 96MM boe, with a peak production rate of around 50,000 bo/d. The…
AGR and Ross Offshore have both this week announced frame agreements with Norwegian clients. AGR won a five-year frame agreement, with several extension options, with BP Norge for consultancy services. AGR's Norwegian team, based in Stavanger…
Research into second-order rolling on floating LNG vessels has led a joint industry project (JIP) involving 19 companies, including majors, and picked up an industry award. The JIP is being managed by Bureau Veritas and follows a paper…
Resources in the Barents Sea could play a key role in maintaining Norwegian gas output in the 2020s and beyond, according to a Gassco report on new gas transport and processing facilities. Planned exploration activity up to 2017 is expected…
An OptaSense instrument well with a vibroseis unit conducting OptaSense DAS-VSP. Photos from OptaSense. OptaSense is collaborating with Shell to develop a fully-marinizied DAS system. OptaSense's David Hill explains…
Total's Martin Linge development in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea took two steps forward this week, with the sailout of a 16,000-tonne jacket (pictured right) and the arrival of the Maersk Intrepid in Norway. The Maersk…
Industry body Oil & Gas UK has appointed two oil company operator representatives to its board. Effective immediately, Glen Cayley (pictured), upstream director, Shell UK Limited, has been appointed vice chairman, representing the operator community…
Dubai-based Drydocks World has completed the HVDC converter platform DolWin beta (pictured), described as the world’s largest in terms of capacity. The platform is one of the main components of TenneT's 900 MW DC offshore grid connection DolWin2…
Shares in Norwegian geophysical firm Magseis started trading on the Oslo Axess stock exchange on Friday. Magseis was founded in 2009, and has developed a proprietary Ocean Bottom Seismic (OBS) technology. The company has one purpose-built vessel in operation…
Circle Oil has started drilling exploration well EMD-1 on the offshore Mahdia Permit using the drillship PetroSaudi Discoverer. The well is near existing producing fields, including the Tazerka, Birsa, Oudna, and Halk El Menzel oil fields…
First production from Lundin’s Brynhild subsea tieback development has been set back to due commissioning issues on the Haewene Brim FPSO. Brynhild, which sits in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, will be a four-well subsea tieback to Bluewater’s Haewene Brim…
UK-based exploration firm Hurricane Energy has completed the drilling phase of the ongoing operation to drill and test a horizontal appraisal well on its Lancaster discovery, West of Shetland. The well has been drilled to plan and a 1km…