Andrew McBarnet puts the decision-making of marine seismic companies under the microscope.Carrying on where we left off (OE last month), the future of financially troubled SeaBird Exploration and its ocean bottom node (OBN) seismic acquisition business remains unclear…
A growing belief that the ‘bow wave' of the long-awaited North Sea decommissioning market has now reached the industry was evident at last month's sell-out Offshore Decommissioning Conference† in Dunblane, Scotland. Meg Chesshyre reports.A plea…
When a story becomes the story it may sell a few more newspapers for a couple of days but most editors know that this is not a good way to the future – unless of course ideologically driven or vested interest motives become barely disguised…
FirmsGreatship Subsea Solutions and Gregg Marine formed an alliance to offer subsea geotechnical site investigation services globally. The venture plans to offer a DP2 geotechnical drillship with a seafloor drill capable of coring and sampling in 3000m water depth…
A deployment system for the installation of large-diameter, reinforced, bonded rubber hose offloading lines for catenary anchor leg mooring buoys has been developed by floating production and mooring systems company SBM Offshore and handling systems specialist Caley Ocean Systems…
With a number of new vessels in the works and others just starting to make their presence felt in the market, Jumbo Offshore's recent announcement that it will build a new-generation K-Class heavylift vessel suggests there's still plenty of competitive juice in the offshore installation…
As gas wells mature and the produced gas becomes less able to carry water from the well, a decline in flow rate and production to rates below the anticipated decline curve often results. Bert Lugtmeier and Kees Veeken from Dutch operator NAM…
Mooring Chevron's Jack/St MaloMore than 164,000ft of polyester mooring rope plus accessories and field inspection support services are to be supplied by Parker Hannifin's energy products division for Chevron's Jack/ St Malo floating production unit…
North Sea independent Ithaca Energy will use Petrofac's FPF-1 semi – the former AH-001 deployed by Hess on Ivanhoe/Rob Roy – as a production hub to develop the Greater Stella Area (GSA ) fields, Stella, Harrier, Hurricane and Helios. Jennifer Pallanich reports…
The Macondo incident pushed oil spill response to the top of the environmental agenda. A recent contest let some innovative companies demonstrate spill response equipment – and for one of the event's technical advisors, Shell, to reassure the public that it intends to operate safely in Alaska…
BP has received approval from the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a supplemental exploration plan in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, the company’s first such approval since the April 2010 blowout and spill at its Macondo prospect and…
The long-delayed final report on the Macondo disaster from the joint BOEMRE/USCG investigation team chose not to pinpoint a fundamental cause. However, veteran offshore oil & gas consultant and occasional expert witness Ian Fitzsimmons has no such qualm…
Combining Alternate Path shunt tube technology with concentric sandface completion systems is improving operational efficiency and economics while bringing new life to old offshore wells in Malaysian waters. Here, Schlumberger's Shahryar Saebi and Sergey…
The oil & gas industry has long used dry ice as an isolation technique, for example to freeze a wellbore and allow intervention work. Now, after years of application in the nuclear sector, cryogenic freezing using liquid nitrogen has started to make inroads offshore…
An innovative installation approach was adopted this summer for a Dutch riser access tower constructed under Shell's SWEEP gas accumulation development programme. David Morgan reports.The 800t riser access tower (RAT) was fabricated by Mercon…