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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A new method of installing large subsea structures without the aid of a heavylift vessel is currently being introduced to the offshore engineering community by the Anglo-Faroese pairing of structural engineer David Paul and naval architect Arnbjørn Joensen…
Subsea equipment specialist Seatools is scheduled to deliver its latest offshore innovation – a remotely operated vehicle system that will combine the functions of a survey ROV with those of a fallpipe rock-dump ROV – this summer.The pioneering…
A shortage of experienced geoscientists and petroleum engineers will delay projects and could push operators to take more risks, according to a survey released 29 March 2011.The labor market for mid-career petrotechnical professionals ‘will be tight over the next three years…
Decommissioning and abandonment specialist Cutting Underwater Technologies (Cut) assisted Heerema's Thialf with the removal of the Norpipe 37/4A booster platform's eightlegged steel jacket as part of Norway's Ekofisk cessation project. The 5500t platform stood in 85m of water…
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…
Once in a while I would like to look inward and discuss technical advances in the industry or how things have evolved. In the case of hydraulic fracturing, the process has emerged as the premier production enhancement technique in oil and gas…
The world's largest cargo barge – Heerema's H-851 – announced its arrival on the offshore scene in 1988 when installing the 44,785t jacket for Shell's Bullwinkle platform in a then daunting 412m of water in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, following…
