Under a memorandum of understanding with Petrobras, Cameron plans to invest $30 million in R&D facilities at two Brazilian locations. The company's Jacarei plant will add testing capabilities, including a hyperbaric chamber, along with a highpressure flow loop for use in testing and qualifying compact separators and measurement equipment. And a new joint center for technology development at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas compound in Campinas, also in Sao Paulo State, will become Cameron's Center of Excellence for research in Brazil.
Oceaneering International is expanding its subsea business portfolio with the purchase of Norse Cutting & Abandonment. The $60 million transaction was expected to close by the end of March. Oceaneering Umbilical Solutions' design and manufacturing plant at Rosyth, Scotland, is investing $2 million in a pioneering test, qualification and reliability laboratory to evaluate and assimilate the long term behaviour of deepwater umbilical cables.
Norwegian subsea sampling start-up Mirmorax is acquiring the oil-in-water product line from Emerson's Roxar Flow Measurement division. As part of the deal, Mirmorax will also secure all intellectual property rights for the product from Dutch technology company TNO Science & Industry, a member of the original JIP with Roxar that developed the OiW monitor along with Statoil, Eni, Shell and Petroleum Development Oman.
Balmoral Offshore Engineering is to open a new facility in Brazil for the manufacture of the company's deepwater riser buoyancy and insulation systems and elastomer mouldings for bend stiffeners, restrictors and cable protectors.
CGGVeritas and JSC Geotech Holding have signed a term sheet to create a joint venture to operate 2D and 3D marine seismic vessels, primarily in Russian and CIS waters.
Seawell and Allis-Chalmers Energy are to operate under the new name Archer, although the legal entity will remain Seawell Americas. The merger of Seawell's drilling and well services business with Allis-Chalmers' drilling, rental and oilfield service in a $890 million transaction was completed late February. As well as Seawell, Allis- Chalmers Energy, Noble Platform Drilling; Peak Well Solutions and TecWel, the Archer portfolio also includes Gray Wireline and Universal Wireline, both acquired by Seawell in recent months – for $157.5 million and $25.5 million respectively – to expand its cased hole wireline and slickline service offering in the US.
Knowledge Reservoir and Quest Offshore Resources have formed an alliance to provide joint consulting services and integrated reservoir, production, facilities, and costing data solutions to the upstream industry.
GE Oil & Gas officially opened both its new hyperbaric testing hall and a newly refurbished electrical & electronics assembly plant in Nailsea, UK, recently. The hyperbaric test chamber facility simulates extreme deepwater pressure conditions up to 440 bar for the precise testing of subsea control modules and other components. It is expected to test up to 300 control modules a year.
Bornemann Pumps has opened an office in Houston.
Siemens has entered into an agreement to acquire the two subsea groups, Poseidon and Bennex, from Norway's Subsea Technology Group. Poseidon provides subsea marinization, engineering and consulting while Bennex develops and manufactures subsea equipment mainly for power solutions. The combined revenue of the two companies is approximately E75 million.
Cargotec has completed the acquisition of terminal operating system provider Navis from Zebra Technologies. The deal brings together Navis' flexible and scalable TOS software with Cargotec's specialist cargo and load handling equipment and services.
Vam Drilling will soon be operating a fully integrated mill in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The company said the new mill would speed up deliveries of its drill pipe, risers and landing strings to customers in South America.
Bredero Shaw FJS is the new trade name of the business unit that combines most of the former field joint and custom coating application activities of Bredero Shaw.
InterMoor has opened a new facility in Morgan City, Louisiana, featuring 1100ft of bulkhead, 180,000ft2 of in-house storage, 120,000ft2 of rental space, 2400ft2 of indoor warehousing, and a 100ft x 200ft blast and paint yard. Other capabilities boasted by the facility include magnetic particle inspection, dock side loadouts, and wire rope spooling and inspection.
Rod Eichler has been appointed president and COO at Apache, taking responsibility for the company's ten operating regions, worldwide drilling, gas monetization and worldwide projects. Following the departure of John Crum, co-COO and president North America to privately held E&P;company Midstates Petroleum as CEO, Roger Plank has been appointed Apache's president and chief corporate officer, with Dave Gilbronson becoming VP international marketing and Mark Bright VP North America marketing.
Mark Routh, founder and former MD of CH4 Energy in the UK, has become chairman of Warrego Energy, a private Scottish company focused on developing Australia's West Erregulla gas field in the North Perth Basin. Other new arrivals at Warrego include Owain Franks, as CFO, and Rob Marshall, as Perth-based asset manager.
Ken Marnoch has been appointed MD of Brunei Shell Petroleum in Brunei Darussalam, succeeding Grahaeme Henderson who has become VP shipping and a director of the Shell International Trading & Shipping, based in London. Marnoch was previously COO of the Qatargas 4 LNG Venture in Doha and Royal Dutch Shell's global EP/GP audit manager.
John Gremp has taken over as president and CEO of FMC Technologies in succession to Peter Kinnear, who stays on as chairman through October 2011 when Gremp will also assume that role. Gremp has served as president and COO of FMC Technologies since April 2010.
David Dunlap has been elected president of Superior Energy Services. EVP and COO at BJ Services prior to its acquisition, Dunlap joined Superior as CEO in April 2010 and will continue in that role. Sam Hardy becomes an EVP. He joined the company with the 2006 acquisition of Warrior Energy Services, where he served as COO.
Dr John Thorogood was presented with the 2011 SPE drilling engineering award at last month's SPE/ IADC Drilling conference in Amsterdam. Thorogood is now an independent technical advisor to operators, having worked in operations and technology for BP and heritage companies from 1973-2007 in many parts of the world.
Curt Watson has joined Mustang as SVP global business development and marketing. Most recently he served as VP projects in the URS (Washington Group) oil, gas and chemicals division.
Alan Linn has been appointed CEO of Sydneybased independent Roc Oil, whose principal assets are offshore Australia and New Zealand and in China's Beibu Gulf.
Former Dominion Gas CEO George Yule has joined the board of Aberdeenshirebased Romar International as executive chairman.
M Kevin McEvoy , a 32-year veteran at Oceaneering International, steps up from EVP and COO to president and CEO next month. He takes over from the retiring T Jay Collins after the company's 2011 shareholders meeting.
Former Technip subsea division president Dominique de Soras has replaced Wan Yusoff bin Wan Hamat as MD and CEO of Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering, based in Pasir Gudang, Johor.
Cobie Loper has joined SBM Atlantia as SVP sales and marketing, North America. He previously served in a similar capacity at DeepFlex.
Sarah Baylis has joined Aberdeen-based sand monitoring and management services specialist SMS as principal consultant for the integrated project engineering department.
Steven Scott has been promoted from VP EAME to VP eastern hemisphere by inflatable and swellable packers specialist Tam International. He has worked for the company for 24 years in Aberdeen and Houston. Also promoted is Bob Brooks , who steps up from technical director to VP technical services.
Ryan McPherson, as ITF's in-country regional manager, will head up the industry technology facilitator's new office due to open in Abu Dhabi this month. McPherson previously worked as business improvement lead for PSN.
Former Expro CEO Gavin Prise has joined the board of Read Well Services following its decision to split its operations into two sister companies. He assumes the role of CEO of Read Cased Hole, with existing CEO Fraser Louden continuing in that capacity at the Read Expandables business unit.
Mike Benjamin , formerly of Schlumberger, has joined TD Williamson as VP offshore pipeline solutions, located in Houston.
Sheldon Hunt has been appointed VP operations for the Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation, based in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has served for 12 years as the primary utility consultant and energy advisor for the US Army in the Pacific region.
John Carlton , professor of marine engineering at London's City University, became the 109th president of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology (IMarEST) in March. Until his retirement in 2010, Professor Carlton was the Lloyd's Register global head of marine technology and investigation.
Henk van den Ijssel has been appointed commercial director of Cecon ASA. He joins from Acergy, where he previously served as VP business development.
Simone Barnett has joined compliance and competency e-learning specialist Atlas Interactive as head of global marketing, based in Aberdeen. She was previously a director of AVC Creative.
Andre Vitta will manage the Woods Hole Group's new office in Brazil under the guidance of science operation VP Robert Catalano.
Darrel Fanguy has joined Athens Group as a director of business development. His 25 years of oil patch experience in the US and UK includes stints with Barco, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Sonat Subsea and Aveva.
Maury Dumba has been named VP business development for Greene's Energy Group. Dumba was previously Cadre Services' CEO.
Jon Dunstan has been appointed COO of Ezra Holdings' spinoff company Emas Offshore Construction, a Singaporebased owner/operator of FPSOs and offshore accommodation/ construction barges.
Håvard Åsli has been named Scandinavian marketing & sales manager for Dolphin Geophysical. He previously worked for TGS, CGGVeritas, Wavefield Inseis and Multiwave.
Chris Lilley has become BDM in Singapore for UK-based pipeline isolation and intervention specialist Stats Group, which is establishing a trading company there and also plans to set up an operational base.
Gary Lindsay has been appointed Asia Pacific BDM for Scottish container rental and accommodation modules specialist Ferguson Modular, based in Singapore.
Mukundray Davé has been appointed to lead GL Noble Denton's hazard and risk management practice in the Americas.
Ben Shand becomes Australia BDM of remote visual inspection specialist Inspectahire. He is based in Brisbane.
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