A federal investigation into the 2010 Macondo disaster does not pinpoint what caused the well's cement job to fail, but backs up earlier conclusions that operator BP and its contractors skirted safety measures that could have prevented the blowout…
It took a month to admit that there was an oil spill in China’s Bohai Bay, from June 4 – when it happened – to July 5 when China’s The Global Times, in an unusual reaction from a presumably government controlled newspaper, wrote: ‘We cannot…
The trend of increasing wellbore complexity for extended reservoir contact, and greater reservoir heterogeneity along the contact, are demanding improved monitoring and control solutions. Tendeka's Garth Naldrett and Tor Inge Åsen review recent wireless wellbore advances offshore Norway…
Australian contractor Clough is selling its offshore marine construction business to Malaysia's SapuraCrest Petroleum in a cash deal worth roughly $129 million. The sale includes the Java Constructor derrick lay barge, Clough's interest in the…
Despite a reputation for ‘cumbersome’ contract processes, recent oil & gas sector reforms have created a more favorable investment climate at Mexican state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, a Pemex official told the 2011 Petroleum Exposition & Conference of Mexico in Villahermosa…
Dozens of obsolete offshore platforms have been successfully converted to artificial reefs under the US ‘rigs-to-reefs’ program. But an independent Houston operator is pushing for rule changes that, its CEO says, would preserve far more delicate ecosystems…
Iraq's large oil-production potential could put it in a position to vie for leadership with Saudi Arabia in the world oil scene in the coming decades.But a study released by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy finds that in the near term…
As the jacket for Statoil's Gudrun development went in last month, confirmation that there was communication between the Norwegian operator's high-impact Aldous Major South discovery and Lundin's Avaldsnes oil find was generating much excitement…
The number and total value of US oil & gas mergers and acquisitions dipped slightly in 2Q 2011 over the same period last year, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study. But the average deal value for the largest transactions rose by 14%…
‘We don’t see ourselves as just the crane people, we want to be seen as a lifting solutions provider.’ So says Doug Sedge, the highly regarded and much travelled chief executive of Sparrows. He talks to Meg Chesshyre.As a company we have a significantly large engineering resource base…
Downhole gauges and ESP bypass systems are among the home-grown, leading edge offerings in the Zenith Oilfield Technology portfolio. Meg Chesshyre met up with managing director Greg Davie to find out what else the company has in the works.Based near Aberdeen…
Discovering Arctic EuropeResources and business conditions in Arctic Europe will be the subject of a mini-seminar during Offshore Europe organized by the cities of Aberdeen, Bodø and Kirkenes.A large new area became available when the delimitation…
OE's popular annual guide to oil & gas developments on the Northwest European Continental Shelf returns, fully updated.Operators in the UK sector of the North Sea were taken aback in March this year by UK Chancellor George Osborne's decision to raise the supplementary tax rate from 20% to 32%…
With Canadian environmental regulators tightening their monitoring and control of fluids used offshore, Castrol's Jason Vallier and K+D Pratt's Andrew Bell review existing guidelines elsewhere and the implications for Canada's E&P sector.The…
One of the key performance indicator’s of an installation’s integrity performance is the number of hydrocarbon releases, along with the importance of workforce competency in managing these risks. While North Sea statistics had shown a continued…