The Marin Subsea asset recovery team was recently called in to recover a blowout preventer and lower marine riser package from 488m of water in Brazil. Within 20 minutes of the initial phone call, the Marin team had made a preliminary assessment…
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…
The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect OE's position.Detesting cruel and unusual punishment, preventing double jeopardy and imposing statutes of limitations are basic tenets of the legal systems of democracies. A judiciary…
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…
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,…
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…
A decade and a half after its Mars TLP started production, Shell is gearing up for the Mars B development and its centerpiece, the Olympus TLP. Russell McCulley talks to Robert Patterson, Shell VP upstream major projects for the Americas, about…
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…
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…
Cape Wind clears another hurdleThe Cape Wind offshore wind power project in January received a final permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency to begin construction of the first US offshore wind farm. The agency's approval came a…
A 2000ft plume of volcanic ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull brought chaos and confusion to European airspace last year. North Sea offshore helicopter operators are accustomed to dealing high winds, driving rain and freezing fog, but how did they cope with this new phenomenon…
During the recent inauguration of the new premises of Alstom Hydro Ocean Energy on the island of Nantes, the French group revealed some of the key characteristics of its Beluga 9 tidal electricity-generating turbine and announced it will undergo its first tests in Canada's Bay of Fundy in 2012…
New reports point, cautiously, to better times ahead for the industry in 2011. But uncertainty in the post-Macondo Gulf of Mexico remains, as Russell McCulley writes.World oil demand bounced back in 2010 to its 2007 all-time high, according to a December report from Wood Mackenzie…
Newly published Polar class vessel rules from French classification society Bureau Veritas are aimed at speeding Arctic and Caspian Sea oil and gas development by facilitating the building of tank, cargo and offshore service vessels which can operate unsupported by icebreakers in very heavy ice…
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