Aker Solutions plans to purchase Canadian asset integrity management (AIM) company Thurm Energy, the company announced on 22 November 2012.The financial details were undisclosed; however, Aker said the acquisition will grow its AIM portfolio and boost its presence in the Atlantic Canada market…
US Coast Guard PhotoAfter 100 hours of search and rescue efforts, Black Elk Energy has ended its search for a missing worker who vanished following an explosion at its production platform offshore Louisiana on Friday, the company announced on 20 November…
BurundiGAC UK & GAC-Seaforth have overcome challenges to complete the successful delivery of a complex collection of cargo to Lake Tanganyika, Burundi, to support Surestream Petroleum (UK)'s explorations in Africa.Independent oil exploration company Surestream Petroleum Ltd…
Smoke plume rising from Black Elk Energy production platformTwo contractors are missing and 11 were injured when an oil production platform offshore Louisiana caught on fire, the U.S. Coast Guard announced on 16 November 2012.At the time of the fire…
Aircraft builder Boeing will employ composite materials in large quantity in its new Dreamliner 787 and use them for the main structural elements. Is the offshore sector ready to follow suit at last? wonders riser engineering specialist Steve Hatton…
U.S. Coast Guard photo of the Black Elk Energy production platformHouston-based Black Elk Energy vowed to continue searching for a missing contractor after the U.S. Coast Guard suspended efforts on Saturday offshore Louisiana, the company announced on 18 November 2012…
China is on track to reach levels of oil use on par with today’s US demand by 2040, according to a new study by the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.The study, The Rise of China and Its Energy Implications…
Map of Beibu Gulf Roc Oil has struck multiple hydrocarbon pays in the Weizhou formation in the Beibu Gulf offshore southern China, the Australian explorer announced on 5 November 2012.The WZ6-12-A6 deviated step-out exploration well reached a total depth of 2…
Rising day rates and demand for drilling in deepwater environments are helping the offshore drilling sector recover from not just the global economic gloom of recent years but also the post-Macondo drilling moratorium in the US. According to…
Over the last 18 months or so, Petrobras has a string of reported discoveries to its credit. Company CEO Maria das Graças Silva Foster said the 2011 discoveries alone added 1.24 billion barrels of equivalent oil to Petrobras’ numbers, with 1 billion of that coming from the pre-salt area…
Statoil will launch a drilling campaign in the Norwegian Barents Sea before the end of the year with four exploration wells in the Skrugard area, the company announced at this year’s Offshore Northern Seas (ONS) conference in Stavanger. But its Arctic ambitions go much farther…
Baker Hughes has expanded its SmartCare line of products to include what the company describes as ‘more environmentally responsible’ drilling and completion fluids, production chemicals and additives used in cementing and stimulation procedures…
A flurry of early contracts marked August's official sanction of the £1.4 billion development of Cygnus, the largest southern North Sea gas discovery in the last 25 years. Meg Chesshyre reports.GDF Suez, which will operate Cygnus on behalf of partners Centrica and Bayerngas…
Overall, total capital investment on developing UK oil & gas reserves rose by 40% to £8.5 billion in 2011, according to Oil & Gas UK's 2012 Economic Report. Confirmation in the 2012 UK Budget of measures to promote activity in a targeted way…
French-owned utility group GDF Suez is stepping up its UK exploration and production operations with the goal of becoming a major player in the North Sea. The company's UK E&P arm has been involved in the sector for the past 15 years, but is now working up major expansion plans…