Subsea welding goes deeperA decade of research at the UK's Cranfield University has confirmed that subsea welding can be successfully conducted at depths of up to 940m, more than 600m deeper than previous records and far deeper than the 180m depth limit for divers…
For Fluor, America is only one land of opportunity. Recent contract wins for work offshore Australia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East have buoyed Fluor's backlog. Jennifer Pallanich talks to Fluor executives about recent contract wins and Fluor's offshore strategy…
Competence testing, true independent oversight and a stronger focus on the human element are the lessons from Macondo, argues Lloyd's Register energy director Dr Iain Light. --The offshore industry has just had the dubious distinction of…
Greene's Energy Group has opened an operational base in Singapore to serve the company's Asia Pacific region. The 140,000ft2 location includes offices, a warehouse and heavy equipment yard space, and will provide a regional base for all of Greene's business divisions…
The season of joint industry projects has dawned, with a handful of announcements being made in the last month or so about subsea efforts. Two of those focus on SURF-type equipment while a third is focused on pipelines. OE highlights some of the newest areas gaining industry attention…
March's Japanese earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear contamination at the Fukushima power plant spawned a disaster that will be hard to remedy or forget. As usual the events have had a number of dimensions, mostly unfortunate for that country no matter how developed and prosperous it has been…
Three Alaskan Beaufort Sea developments – BP Exploration (Alaska)'s Northstar, Pioneer --Natural Resources' Oooguruk and now Eni Petroleum's Nikaitchuq – have helped establish baseline experience for future arctic frontier pipelines. As well as demonstrating technical strides…
High-modulus polyethylene ropes for deepwater mooring were first trialled 10 years ago, but despite promising early results subsequent problems with excessive creep stalled their application. A decade on, the situation has improved to the point…
The UK offshore industry recognised that a key component to achieving a reduction in offshore hazards and incidents was to improve basic safety training for all personnel. OE looks at the e-learning programme designed to achieve that goal and now ready for roll out internationally…
Cheese may never be far from the thoughts of the French. But what concerns classification and verification group Bureau Veritas is the holes in cheese – and more precisely how to avoid them. OE hears from BV offshore projects manager Jose Esteve…
Integrated approachIn the works for some time, Halliburton's Optimized Drilling Performance (ODP) approach is aimed at improving drilling efficiency and saving drilling time. ‘We've evolved this workflow over a few years,' said Jeremy ‘Jez' Greenwood…
Production from another of Norway's old-timers, Statfjord A, could potentially shut down as early as 2014 according to operating plans under consideration by operator Statoil. The company recently circulated a consultative document based on that assumption…
Worldwide, the mobile offshore drilling fleet has kept between 500 to 550 rigs under contract over the past two years. Recent overall utilization remains at a two-year low of 68% or 507 rigs working. However, tendering activity has been on the…
A more optimistic view of the future of the southern North Sea gas and the hard-pressed East of England offshore supply chain emerged at a recent regional conference in Norwich. Meg Chesshyre reports.Having acquired assets from BP, Shell and BG in 2003 and ExxonMobil fields in 2007…
Differing perspectives on the African exploration & production scene were offered during IP Week in London last month, with Tullow Oil and Afren describing their respective approaches to the continent and Equatorial Guinea's energy ministry updating the republic's offshore developments to date…