Offshore Regions News - page 1729


Safe passage for Sonangol crews

Feb 02, 2011

With a year of incident-free operation in West Africa under their belt, Steve Douglas and David Brittan reckon combining the first CrewZer-class vessel with the latest Frog transfer devices has produced arguably the industry's safest crew supply…

US tightens regulatory grip

Feb 02, 2011

A week after the long-awaited release of a presidential commission’s report on the Macondo disaster, US Interior secretary Ken Salazar announced the latest moves in the reorganization of the agency that oversees offshore oil & gas activities…

Spec build FPSOs: dangerously risky

Feb 02, 2011

Floating systems consultant Peter Lovie pinpoints some of the perils of speculative FPS building and wonders if the practice may now have become just too risky for operators or contractors to consider.In the service vessel business and in the…

Khodorkovsky is Putin jail again

Feb 02, 2011

The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect OE's position.Detesting cruel and unusual punishment, preventing double jeopardy and imposing statutes of limitations are basic tenets of the legal systems of democracies. A judiciary…

Deeper, further, colder

Jan 02, 2011

Newly published Polar class vessel rules from French classification society Bureau Veritas are aimed at speeding Arctic and Caspian Sea oil and gas development by facilitating the building of tank, cargo and offshore service vessels which can operate unsupported by icebreakers in very heavy ice…

Macondo: the human factors

Jan 02, 2011

Responding to consultant Ian Fitzsimmons' recent remarks in OE about BP's accident investigation report on the Gulf of Mexico's Macondo well disaster, drilling specialist Dr John Thorogood argues that it's time to stop pointing the accusatory finger and start learning the human factors lesson…

E&P minnows making their mark upstream

Jan 02, 2011

The Oil Council's recent World Energy Capital assembly in London shone a light on the new generation of smaller companies from disparate backgrounds now beginning to make their presence felt on the international exploration and production stage…

A life led horizontally

Jan 02, 2011

For this specially extended edition of his monthly OE column, Professor Michael Economides invited famed horizontal drilling pioneer Jacques Bosio to collaborate on a piece discussing the provenance of this breakthrough technology and its continuing influence on oil & gas well design today…

Renewables ... Bay of Fundy tests for Alstom's first tidal turbine generator

Jan 02, 2011

During the recent inauguration of the new premises of Alstom Hydro Ocean Energy on the island of Nantes, the French group revealed some of the key characteristics of its Beluga 9 tidal electricity-generating turbine and announced it will undergo its first tests in Canada's Bay of Fundy in 2012…

New year could herald offshore rebound

Jan 02, 2011

New reports point, cautiously, to better times ahead for the industry in 2011. But uncertainty in the post-Macondo Gulf of Mexico remains, as Russell McCulley writes.World oil demand bounced back in 2010 to its 2007 all-time high, according to a December report from Wood Mackenzie…

The US ignores this cold war at its peril

Dec 31, 2010

During the Cold War, leaders recognized that a robust energy supply was a sign of power, economic strength and prosperity. But now, two decades on, there appears to be an unquestionable sign of ‘change’ – and it’s not necessarily change for the better for the US…

M&A up in the US

Dec 31, 2010

Merger and acquisition activity in the US oil & gas sector picked up steam 3Q 2010, despite ongoing uncertainty about business in the Gulf of Mexico, reported PricewaterhouseCoopers.For the three-month period ending 30 September, there were…

Forties field: an updatable full field model

Dec 31, 2010

The overhaul of the reservoir model of the giant Forties oilfield – from data management to full field simulation – is described here by operator Apache North Sea’s Jeffery Pyle and Schlumberger’s Gordy Shanor.Production from the Forties field began in 1975…

The view from Villahermosa

Dec 31, 2010

With close proximity to the offshore Cantarell and Ku-Maloob-Zaap fields, the inland Gulf of Mexico port of Villahermosa is a major operation center for Mexican state oil company Pemex. Last month the city again played host to the Petroleum Exhibition & Conference of Mexico (PECOM)…

Rig market - December 2010

Dec 31, 2010

Worldwide utilization for the mobile offshore drilling fleet averaged 72% over the last month. Of late the global utilization rates for semisubmersibles have held steady at approximately 83% while rates for drillships have bounced around the mid-to-low 80% range…

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Tyra II Facilities to Operate at Full Technical Capacity Sooner Than Expected

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