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…
Cape Wind clears another hurdleAnother challenge to its long-delayed quest to become the US’s first offshore wind farm was successfully fought off by Cape Wind as federal regulators in August upheld an earlier decision that said the project posed no threat to airways…
FIRMSSubsea 7 has entered a global technology partnership agreement with CRC-Evans Pipeline International. Under the agreement CRC-Evans' automatic welding, coating and testing technologies will be installed at the Subsea 7 pipeline fabrication spoolbases in Angola…
Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker and peak oil alarmist who in recent years was a strong advocate of renewable energy, died on 8 August at his home near Rockland, Maine. He was 67.In the 2005 book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy…
Continuous registration of vessel traffic above pipelines via the proposed Automatic Identification System (AIS) represents a significant improvement on pipeline operators' emergency response to possible mechanical damage, says Jens Erik Thygesen…
Five Ashtech ProFlex 500 GNSS receivers are helping guide the operations of the self-propelled offshore wind turbine installation vessel Bard Wind Lift I during construction of the first commercial wind farm in the German North Sea. The GNSS receivers are used for the jackup's every manoeuvre…
Newly merged contractors Royal Boskalis Westminster and Smit Internationale got a foretaste of the operational synergies expected to stem from this move when their activities coincided earlier this year in the Strait of Magellan at the remote southernmost tip of Argentina…
With the UK poised to introduce an offshore carbon storage licensing regime, a process and design optimisation specialist and an Aberdeen-headquartered engineering, construction, operations maintenance and project management group are planning…
BP has come under fierce criticism for its response to the Macondo blowout, a months-long saga of top hats, riser insertion tools and other containment efforts that only began collecting a significant portion of the oil spilling into the Gulf several weeks after the event…
Macondo mattersSir, OE's article by Ian Fitzsimmons on preventing future Macondo spills [‘Macondo and other titanic struggles', OE July] was excellent and I distributed a copy to my colleagues both in EIA and DOE. The recommendations made…
Gas is part of the solution to the global energy challenge says Brian Bjordal, president and CEO of Gassco, whose throughput of gas has doubled in just ten years. Meg Chesshyre reports.On the positive side, notes Bjordal, there are significant…
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…
Subsea trenching is not seen as one of the offshore industry's most glamorous or challenging activities – what could be more straightforward than digging in the dirt? In truth, however, it is far easier to lose money trenching than to make it…
Following a recent flurry of new contracts, Marine Subsea UK is currently carrying out a multi-client well abandonment programme for a number of North Sea operators. Managing director Alasdair Cowie talks to Meg Chesshyre about how he sees the multiclient approach as the way forward…
Increased uncertainties about operating in ultra-deepwater typically result in over-designed production systems with resulting increased costs. Prasanna Parthasarathy and Kellin Nelson of MSi Kenny and Shell's Howard Littell discuss how high…