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…
Wave and tidal energy specialist Marine Current Turbines and its project partners Queen's University Belfast, Mojo Maritime and Edinburgh University, have secured a grant of £250,000 from the UK's Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering…
Five Ashtech ProFlex 500 GNSS receivers are helping guide the operations of the self-propelled offshore wind turbine installation vessel Bard Wind Lift I during construction of the first commercial wind farm in the German North Sea. The GNSS receivers are used for the jackup's every manoeuvre…
Following a recent flurry of new contracts, Marine Subsea UK is currently carrying out a multi-client well abandonment programme for a number of North Sea operators. Managing director Alasdair Cowie talks to Meg Chesshyre about how he sees the multiclient approach as the way forward…
Weather is a major factor when planning offshore drilling campaigns. Asbjørn Stålesen of FMC Technologies says the company's Real Time Operating Limits system has allowed it to increase the time available for carrying out drilling work.The biggest…
With a major Russian Arctic contract already in the bag for next year, the Tideway Group is looking at early payback on its €115 million investment in the industry's first ice-class fallpipe rockdump vessel.Dubbed Flintstone, the DP2 vessel…
The Xodus Group has achieved rapid growth since its three founding directors set it up as an independent consultancy in 2005. Now an international company, its employee base numbers 200 in the UK and 70 in Australia. Turnover in the 12 months to September 2009 was around £24 million…
Aware of the step-change in offshore windfarm construction that is required to meet today's renewable energy targets, governments around the world have instigated new planning procedures to encourage yet control offshore renewable energy development…
Among the greatest uncertainties in future energy supply is the amount of oil and gas yet to be found in the Arctic: the US Geological Survey estimates the region to hold as much as one-fifth of the world's untapped reserves of hydrocarbons…
BP in mid-June began collecting oil & gas from the first phase of a system that taps into the choke and kill valves on the Macondo well's failed blowout preventer. The system employs the same flow lines and manifold used in the company's unsuccessful top kill attempt in May…
Chinese companies have stepped up their activities over the last year, and two recent reports from analysts Infield Energy Analysts and Wood Mackenzie suggest increased activity in the near future, especially as the NOCs venture into deeper waters…
The Titanic, Columbia space shuttle and Deepwater Horizon disasters span a period of almost 100 years but have more in common than might at first be apparent. All three were avoidable and foundered on a misguided belief in their indestructibility…
LOCH NESS SITING:AWS Ocean Energy began testing a 1/9th scale prototype of its new AWS-III wave energy device in Loch Ness. The device is a ring-shaped multi-cell floating power system that, at its full 60m-diameter scale, will be capable of generating up to 2…
firmsAker Solutions subsidiary STEP Offshore has been awarded exclusive rights to sell Derrick Equipment's solids control equipment and related products in Europe. The agreement is valid for capital equipment such as shale shakers, mud cleaners…
Former federal prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich has been tapped to lead the troubled agency that oversees US offshore oil & gas leasing and regulatory compliance. Bromwich was sworn in as director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management…