Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Mines, Industry and Energy (MMIE) has launched the country’s latest licensing round, EG Ronda 2016, that offers 32 blocks offshore West Africa. Image of Minister of Mines…
The Cidade de Saquarema floating production and storage offloading (FPSO) unit is sailing to the Lula field offshore Brazil for its 20-year contract, following its recent conversion at the BRASA shipyard. Cidade de Saquarema departs from BRASA shipyard…
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has granted both Total E&P Norge and Tullow Oil Norge drilling permits in the North Sea. Map of 30/4-3 S, from NPD. Total’s wildcat Total…
Total's Laggan-Tormore subsea to shore development west of Shetland has now ramped up to full production at 90,000 boe/d. The French oil giant held an official inauguration ceremony at the Shetland Gas Plant, built to receive the production…
UK-based explorer Cairn Energy has increased its resource estimate on the major SNE discovery offshore Senegal by 20%, with potential for it to increase further, following successful appraisal work. The deepwater field, sitting in about 1100m water depth…
Cobalt International has struck its sixth pre-salt discovery offshore Angola. The firm made a 'significant condensate and gas' discovery on the Zalophus #1 pre-salt exploration well in Block 20 offshore Angola. It is the firm's third discovery on Block 20…
Dutch designer GustoMSC has launched its GustoMSC SmartCrane at this year's OTC in Houston. Gusto says the crane offers features to directly address the call for cost reduction from operators, while enabling increased efficiency and simultaneous operations (SIMOPS)…
The UK North Sea's first use of a subsea oil storage tank has started, independent operator Premier Oil announced this morning. First oil on the Solan field, which was developed to use normally unmanned facilities, including subsea oil storage and tanker offloading…
Offshore rig count for March 2016 declined 33.4% when compared to March 2015, and 5% compared to February 2016. Image from Baker Hughes Twitter. According to Baker Hughes, there were a total of 241 vessels operating last month…
Carnarvon Petroleum secured 100% interest in the WA-521-P offshore exploration permit in the Roebuck basin on Western Australia’s North West Shelf (NWS). Positioned adjacent to the Phoenix/Roc acreage, Carnarvon has been studying the…
OMV has successfully completed drilling and testing of the Wisting Central II appraisal well in the Barents Sea, with flow rates hitting just above 5000 boe/d. The Transocean Spitsbergen, from OMV…
Tullow Oil is set to start up production at its Jubilee field offshore Ghana later this week, after declaring force majeure on two cargoes last month. Image of the Kwame Nkrumah, from Tullow. In a statement from the company…
UK-based explorer Cairn Energy's latest appraisal well on its SNE discovery offshore Senegal has been hailed a success. Far Ltd, a partner on SNE, has previously estimated the SNE 2C contingent resource at 468 MMbbl. An updated resource…
Chevron's North Sea Erskine field production has been temporarily suspended during maintenance work to remove a pipeline blockage, according to partner Serica Energy. Erskine. Image from Chevron…
PetroRio has received its second cancelation notice, this time from Petrobras, for the Bijupirá and Salema fields offshore Brazil, just two weeks after it received a pink slip from supermajor Shell, leaving the Brazilian minnow completely out of the fields…