With the increased complexity of today’s subsea production systems giving mooring solutions providers much to think about, Viking Moorings chief executive Wolfgang Wandl discusses how his company is rising to the challenge.The global mooring…
The ocean energy industry is still at a nascent stage, but burgeoning support in a few key markets, diverse resource potential and maturing technology are boosting the industry’s prospects for growth. That’s the verdict of a new IHS emerging energy research market study…
The US lifted the six-month moratorium on deepwater exploration in October, while codifying new rules governing drilling safety and well control. Russell McCulley looks at what the new regulations could mean for oil & gas companies doing business in the Gulf of Mexico…
There were echoes of the UK’s Dragon’s Den and its US reality TV brethren Shark Tank when the great and the good of the private equity world gathered in Aberdeen last month to sample the wares of would-be oil & gas sector high fliers.The occasion…
In his think piece for OE’s July issue, consultant Ian Fitzsimmons drew parallels between the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and the earlier Titanic, Ixtoc-1, Piper Alpha, Comet and Challenger disasters in terms of their presumed design infallibility…
Litigation continues in US courts over the Obama administration’s Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling moratorium, despite the early lifting of the six-month drilling ban in October. In a 19 October decision, US District Court judge Martin Feldman…
Long used in deepwater mooring, synthetic ropes are increasingly being employed in deepwater heavy lift operations. Russell McCulley talks to Samson's Dennis Sherman and Offspring International director Dave Rowley about the technology advances that are changing techniques…
OE ’s analysis of current rig market data is updated monthly using statistics provided by Rigzone.comWorldwide utilization for the mobile offshore drilling fleet is tracking at 74%; holding steady for the last three months at the bottom of a…
Reporting from last month’s SEG annual meeting in Denver, Andrew McBarnet finds marine seismic contractors frustrated by contract bidding woes.There is no question about what was bothering the marine seismic community at last month’s well attended…
Current projections indicate around £27 billion will be spent on UK offshore decommissioning over the next 40 years, of which £9.2 billion will be spent over this next decade, according to a 2010 Decommissioning Insight brochure presented at the conference by Robert Harris-Deans…
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…
OE's analysis of current rig market data is updated monthly using statistics provided by Rigzone.com Worldwide utilization for the mobile offshore drilling fleet has averaged 74% over the last two months. Of late the global utilization rates…
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…
BP put the final nail in the Macondo coffin 19 September with a successful relief well kill, ending a five-month ordeal that began with the deaths of 11 offshore workers and spilled some 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.Now comes the task of repairing the company’s image…
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…