Reporting from last month’s SEG annual meeting in Denver, Andrew McBarnet finds marine seismic contractors frustrated by contract bidding woes.There is no question about what was bothering the marine seismic community at last month’s well attended…
All dressed up and nowhere to go is never a good feeling. But that's exactly what has just happened to − of all companies − TGSNopec. The acknowledged maestro of the multiclient seismic survey business last month put out a terse statement that…
With a major service point for the deepwater Gulf of Mexico in Port Fourchon, Louisiana among all US states has the most at stake in the federal government's six-month deepwater drilling moratorium. The effects so far haven't been as bad as some feared…
BP put the final nail in the Macondo coffin 19 September with a successful relief well kill, ending a five-month ordeal that began with the deaths of 11 offshore workers and spilled some 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.Now comes the task of repairing the company’s image…
Mexico just registered its first Clean Development Mechanism with the United Nations under a collaboration between Pemex and Statoil to reduce gas flaring at the onshore Tres Hermanos oil field in Mexico. Statoil said 26 October 2010 the registration…
Cairn Energy has wrapped up its 2010 exploration drilling campaign offshore Greenland and released both the Stena Forth and Stena Don rigs, the company said 26 October 2010.Cairn suspended the Alpha-1S1 exploration well to allow possible re-entry to sidetrack or deepen the well at a later date…
A recent contract renewal for the small UK-based company WGP Group and its partner Thalassa Energy Services is a reminder that the first life of field seismic (LoFS) project on BP's Valhall field offshore Norway has been ongoing since 2003.…
When setting out to reshape itself from a jack-of-all-trades drilling contractor to one with a deepwater future, Pride International realized it had to do more than simply change up its fleet. With deepwater assets tending to feature longer contract cycles than shallow and mid-water rigs…
HYWIND’S HIDDEN ASSETS: Syntactic foam specialist Trelleborg Offshore recently released details of how it employed well-proven offshore oil & gas technology in the subsea buoyancy arrangements for the world’s first wind turbine ‘floater’,…
Mexico's Pemex is preparing this month to issue the first incentive-based contracts allowed under the country's 2008 oil reforms. Most observers agree that the reforms didn't go far enough, but will a new president in 2012 pick up the pace? Russell McCulley reports…
OE's analysis of current rig market data is updated monthly using statistics provided by Rigzone.com Worldwide utilization for the mobile offshore drilling fleet has averaged 74% over the last two months. Of late the global utilization rates…
The effect of the continuing credit crunch last summer meant that North Sea field development activity was down last year, but the steadying of the price this spring has led to projects being dusted off in both the UK and the Norwegian sectors…
Drilling at the Peró and Ingá prospects in block BM-C-40 and the Santa Helena prospect in BM-C-31 has turned up hits for Brazilian relative newcomer OGX. The operator has been focusing on shallow water opportunities (OE April) and has exploratory…
BP in late August was in the final stages of permanently plugging the deepwater Gulf of Mexico Macondo exploration well, which spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil between the 20 April blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig and mid-July…
Finally, some sanity has surfaced in Europe on the subject of climate change and it is from a real scientific heavyweight to boot. Rarely have I found a book* so elegantly simple and yet compelling. Christian Gerondeau, a very well known French scientist and engineer…