In his opinion piece in last month's edition of Offshore Engineer, consultant Ian Fitzsimmons questioned whether the UK Health & Safety Executive's Offshore Division was fit for purpose in a post-Macondo world. Here, Steve Walker, head of the HSE's Offshore Division…
A new line of fire-resistant cables, developed by Keystone with input from engineers, consultants and contractors involved in Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project, will feature on the Westrade Australia stand at this month’s Australasia Oil & Gas show (Perth…
Despite some concerns over the global economic outlook, oil & gas industry leaders are expecting improved performance and higher capital expenditures in 2012, according to an annual survey of top industry executives and directors.The study, Big…
The complexity and sheer scale of Total's Pazflor project in block 17 offshore Angola – the field covers 600km2, six times the surface area of Paris – was outlined at the recent Subsea Europe conference in Paris by Laurent Villard, the operator's SURF installation engineering leader…
The Deepwater Horizon went to its grave on 22 April 2010 taking eleven men with her. In the two years since, the disaster has been investigated and reviewed by several august panels and consultants in the US at the behest of the Obama administration…
With 22 active heave compensated (AHC) cranes ranging from 10t to 250t currently operational on its vessels and another 17 on order, French offshore service provider Bourbon Subsea Services considers itself something of an authority on AHC crane capabilities…
Mooring Chevron's Jack/St MaloMore than 164,000ft of polyester mooring rope plus accessories and field inspection support services are to be supplied by Parker Hannifin's energy products division for Chevron's Jack/ St Malo floating production unit…
A growing belief that the ‘bow wave' of the long-awaited North Sea decommissioning market has now reached the industry was evident at last month's sell-out Offshore Decommissioning Conference† in Dunblane, Scotland. Meg Chesshyre reports.A plea…
In its drive to improve and align safety and competence standards in the global oil and gas industry, Opito International has commissioned new research to discover how companies are assuring the workforce is competent, rather than simply compliant…
Time is running short for a collaborative and cost-efficient approach to decommissioning, believes Optimus consultant Stuart Heggie.Perhaps understandably, governments and operators have put off decommissioning as much as possible. However,…
The proliferation of modern specialist vessels serving just about every sector of the offshore oil & gas business has not gone unnoticed by traditional shipping industry equipment and service providers, as was plain to see at the 2011 Nor-Shipping event in Oslo late May…
An internal Transocean investigation into the explosion and loss of the Deepwater Horizon found that the tragedy was the result of ‘compromised' well integrity due to a series of well design, construction and temporary abandonment decisions made by operator BP…
Earlier this year the refrain was ‘$5 natural gas forever', based on the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) annual outlook, which argued that natural gas prices will remain below $5 per million btu until 2022. The underlying rationale was growth in the ‘vast' US shale gas resource base…
With 107 West African xmas tree jobs to its credit since 2006, Bourbon Subsea Services has built a substantial track record in that region for the maintenance and installation of deepwater trees using vessel cranes. SVP business management Patrick…
An important milestone in Apache's UK North Sea Bacchus field development was reached recently with installation of a 6.7km pipeline bundle. The job was overseen by Flexlife, whose operations director John Marsden here describes how it was planned and executed…