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…
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…
Energy companies and conservationists have joined forces in a novel effort to protect Louisiana’s coastal wetlands using recycled plastic bottles to create floating ‘islands’ offshore one of the state’s most threatened ecosystems.The technology…
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…
The steady workload situation at Schiedam-based HSM Offshore continues to be the envy of many North Sea fabricators. Business was good when OE last visited the yard a year ago; it’s got even better since, as David Morgan reports.Back in the summer of 2010 Total’s K5-CU platform (850t topsides…
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…
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation & Enforcement (BOEM) will publish a call for information and nominations in the Federal Register to gauge interest in wind energy development offshore New Jersey.The 418 nautical square…
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…
Earlier this year, Douglas-Westwood forecast † the industry will spend $139 billion on subsea hardware 2011-15, a 23% jump on the previous five years, with the deepwater Golden Triangle inevitably dominating the anticipated spend. Despite the trials and tribulations of the past year…
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…
A more optimistic view of the future of the southern North Sea gas and the hard-pressed East of England offshore supply chain emerged at a recent regional conference in Norwich. Meg Chesshyre reports.Having acquired assets from BP, Shell and BG in 2003 and ExxonMobil fields in 2007…
Investments in the region of NKr65 billion are on the cards over the next few years following ConocoPhillips' recent submission of its plans for the further development of the Ekofisk and Eldfisk fields to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum & Energy…