Wheatstone%20 News

Fiscal fright for UKCS operators

Apr 01, 2011

A resurgent UK offshore oil & gas sector is mired in fresh uncertainty following the coalition government's surprise imposition of what is, in all but name, a windfall tax on North Sea production. David Morgan reports.In his Budget speech last month…

Rig owners welcome DNV notation

Apr 01, 2011

DNV expects shortly to issue the first ISDS (Integrated Software Dependent Systems) class certificate to Dolphin Drilling. This new state-of-the art class notation has been under development since 2008 and the class society says it is already in demand…

Macondo casts a giant shadow

Mar 02, 2011

The Macondo well disaster and its ramifications were never far from the surface during the recent GE Oil & Gas annual meeting in Florence, where business leaders gathered in large numbers to discuss the technological and regulatory challenges…

BOP recovery at the double

Mar 01, 2011

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…

Nexen spreads its wings

Feb 02, 2011

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…

Containment capability in the cross-hairs

Dec 31, 2010

Post-Macondo efforts to improve well containment capabilities on both sides of the Atlantic moved into higher gear last month.In the US it was confirmed that Technip will handle front- end engineering and design of a proposed subsea well containment…

M&A up in the US

Dec 31, 2010

Merger and acquisition activity in the US oil & gas sector picked up steam 3Q 2010, despite ongoing uncertainty about business in the Gulf of Mexico, reported PricewaterhouseCoopers.For the three-month period ending 30 September, there were…

Upstream capex ready for rebound

Nov 01, 2010

Global upstream capital spending should rebound this year, according to IHS Herold director Nicholas Cacchione, author of the research firm’s 2010 Global Upstream Performance Review, released last month. ‘In North America, E&P investment increased 30% in the first half of 2010…

FPSOs showing their age

Nov 01, 2010

Ageing FPSOs present naval architect with GL – installed March 2000 in 90m potential safety challenges that the oil & gas industry is only now coming to terms with, according to GL Noble Denton. ‘There have been over 200 floating production system deployments…

Risky business

Oct 26, 2010

In a ‘brutally costcompetitive environment,' KBR has been looking at multiple ways to provide its services at an increasingly lower cost, said KBR chairman, president and CEO William P ‘Bill' Lutt during the 2010 Rice Global E&C Forum.Lutt told…

BP eyes Macondo end game

Sep 01, 2010

BP in late August was in the final stages of permanently plugging the deepwater Gulf of Mexico Macondo exploration well, which spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil between the 20 April blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig and mid-July…

Full steam ahead off Brazil

Sep 01, 2010

The pre-salt Tupi field may claim most of the interest when it comes to oil activity offshore Brazil, but plenty is going on along the large country's coastline. In the last two months, Petrobras has brought online two fields, updated its files…

. . . as Wave Hub gets wet

Aug 09, 2010

Subsea installation of the world's largest test facility for wave energy technology was imminent as OE went to press, with the loading of the UK South West Regional Development Agency's pioneering Wave Hub and its 25km power cable onto a cable…

Take your partners

Aug 09, 2010

Big things are in the air at Dockwise. Since going public on the Dutch stock exchange last December, the heavy marine transportation specialist has been putting together an ambitious five-year growth plan for its traditional core business and two key bolt-on activities…

Thinking bigger

Aug 09, 2010

Engineering and building production facilities in-house not only saves money but can also give offshore suppliers a sizeable market edge. That's been the case, and not for the first time, at Moerdijk-based offshore steel wire ropes, cable-laid…

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