Italian services firm Saipem said it has started functional testing on its Hydrone-R underwater resident vehicle at Sonsub facilities in Venice.The advanced underwater intervention drone is being launched in water for a comprehensive qualification…
Activity in the floating production sector has not been slowed by the recent volatility seen across global oil markets, according to a recent report by World Energy Reports (WER).Brent oil, which had reached as high as the mid $70 range earlier this year…
Oil rose towards $65 a barrel on Tuesday as OPEC supply cuts and Middle East tensions outweighed the U.S.-China trade dispute that has been dragging down the global economy and oil demand.OPEC and its allies led by Russia agreed last week to extend their supply-cutting deal until March 2020…
Drones and crawling robots outfitted with special scanning technology could help wind blades stay in service longer, which may help lower the cost of wind energy at a time when blades are getting bigger, pricier and harder to transport, Sandia National Laboratories researchers say…
Esvagt, provider of emergency rescue and response vessels and related services to the offshore energy industry, said it has appointed a new head of business development to lead a push into new services, including in offshore wind.The Danish…
Brent oil rallied above $65 per barrel on Friday and was on track for a 5% gain this week on fears of a U.S. military attack on Iran that would disrupt flows from the Middle East, which provides more than a fifth of the world's oil output.Brent crude was up $0…
UK-based asset integrity firm ICR has acquired drone inspection company Sky-Futures Partners. ICR says the acquisition facilitates the next phase of ICR’s inspection service offering. Sky-Futures has eight years of experience in 28 countries…
...but not without a few global challengesAhead of this year’s Underwater Technology Conference (UTC) in Bergen, Elaine Maslin spoke with key members of the program committee to hear their thoughts on the state of the nation.From its humble beginnings in the offshore oil and gas industry…
For years, “maintenance and modifications” were catchwords for nearly everything that wasn’t greenfield activity offshore. Two economic slowdowns later, subsea “M&M” might be seen as inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR), a segment that includes light well intervention…
Two Belgian companies - Aerospace industry supplier SABCA and DEME Offshore - have formed a partnership to use drones for inspection services in the offshore wind energy industry.SABCA, a leading tier 1 aerospace industry supplier and DEME Offshore…
Missions—it’s all a question of missions. The mission decides the payload, battery capacity, size and processing power of an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV. King among these is payload, from which market disruption is just waiting to happen…
Keeping operations humming on an oil production spar with an integrated drilling rig requires a lot of planning. The inspections, repairs and maintenance plan for the deepwater Mad Dog facility adheres to BP’s risk-based approach but is tailored…
At BP's massive Thunder Horse oil platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, a dog-sized robot called Maggie uses magnetic tracks to creep along pipes connecting the giant oil facility to the sea floor. Before MaggHD, dubbed 'Maggie' by BP, the dangerous inspection…
2017 became the year that the oil and gas industry embraced robotics. Elaine Maslin reports on initiatives in the North Sea (first published in the January 2018 OE, access the full issue here). While the industry has long been using autonomous underwater systems and remotely operated tooling…
A series of trials in the North Sea to test non-intrusive inspection (NII) techniques have shown that they can offer similar results to traditional intrusive methods. Non-intrusive inspection technologies could mean operators do not have to shut-in equipment…
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