Mexico's Pemex is preparing this month to issue the first incentive-based contracts allowed under the country's 2008 oil reforms. Most observers agree that the reforms didn't go far enough, but will a new president in 2012 pick up the pace? Russell McCulley reports…
Mexico just registered its first Clean Development Mechanism with the United Nations under a collaboration between Pemex and Statoil to reduce gas flaring at the onshore Tres Hermanos oil field in Mexico. Statoil said 26 October 2010 the registration…
With a major service point for the deepwater Gulf of Mexico in Port Fourchon, Louisiana among all US states has the most at stake in the federal government's six-month deepwater drilling moratorium. The effects so far haven't been as bad as some feared…
All dressed up and nowhere to go is never a good feeling. But that's exactly what has just happened to − of all companies − TGSNopec. The acknowledged maestro of the multiclient seismic survey business last month put out a terse statement that…
HYWIND’S HIDDEN ASSETS: Syntactic foam specialist Trelleborg Offshore recently released details of how it employed well-proven offshore oil & gas technology in the subsea buoyancy arrangements for the world’s first wind turbine ‘floater’,…
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…
BP in late August was in the final stages of permanently plugging the deepwater Gulf of Mexico Macondo exploration well, which spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil between the 20 April blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig and mid-July…
The six-month US moratorium on deepwater drilling following the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, along with tougher regulations and higher liability costs likely to follow, could put the squeeze on independent operators in the Gulf of Mexico. Russell McCulley talks to one company that's pushing back…
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…
Nieuw-Lekkerland-headquartered Bayards, a key player in the offshore aluminium industry, is seeing early signs that the recession's grip on major oil & gas projects may at last be loosening.‘The market is coming back,' reports the company's commercial director Dick de Kluijver…
BP's Gulf of Mexico oil leak is an unmitigated disaster, not just because of the amount of oil that has to be skimmed, the oil-soaked birds that have to be cleansed and the beaches that require purification. It has allowed an Obama administration…
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…
Four of the largest oil companies have pledged $1 billion to build a rapid response system designed to capture and contain oil in the event of another Macondo-style blowout in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.In a July 21 joint announcement, Chevron…
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…
Unfair though it may seem, it is conceivable that the Macondo incident will have at least as damaging and persistent an impact on the offshore industry as Chernobyl does on the nuclear power industry. Professor Andrew C Palmer explains why.On…