So you want to be an engineer
You might have seen old movies with oil-well gushers splattering the drilling crew, spewing precious barrels of oil on the ground, or news coverage of a North Sea blowout - not that they have been commonplace.
RGU launches Masters in oil & gas law
THE Robert Gordon University's Department of Law at Aberdeen Business School has launched what it says is the first one-year postgraduate Masters in oil & gas law to be delivered solely online.
Incredible – electricity from the exhaust pipe
RESEARCHERS are working on a thermoelectric generator that converts the heat from car exhaust fumes into electricity. The module feeds the energy into the car's electronic systems.
V is for volt, W for watt
Volt - the volt is the International System of Units (SI) measure of electric potential or electromotive force. A potential of one volt appears across a resistance of one ohm when a current of one ampere flows through that resistance.
Banff Academy takes top honours
Hundreds of school students battled it out for honours at the 2008 Celebration of Engineering staged at in Glasgow mid-June, with the topmost award going to a north-east school.
Time to recharge the batteries?
Taking a break from a busy schedule allows you to recharge your batteries and enjoy quality time with family and friends. The average working adult in the UK has annual leave entitlement of 25 days a year, but many employees avoid taking their full holiday entitlement from work.
TUV NEL to test flow metering systems
CLAMP-ON flowmeters are to be independently evaluated by TUV NEL in a joint industry project (JIP) funded by major companies in the oil & gas sector.
Bookings flood in for Energy Ball
IT WILL be the top event of the summer season and you had better get your skates on as well over 1,000 places have been snapped up for Aberdeen's first Energy Ball.
Oil sector companies get WISE about seismic
OHM Group of Aberdeen has decided to embark on a three-year joint industry project to investigate "Well Integration with Seismic and Electromagnetics" (WISE).
North Sea blog OilCity out to capture skills record
THE North Sea's own website, OilCity, is setting out to map the skills of those who work in the industry today or who have retired.
Creating Big Oil’s Clapham junction of the North Sea
Marathon-operated Brae is arguably the most outstanding UKCS example of how an offshore asset can expand from a single platform with an export pipeline to a major infrastructure hub.
Marathon’s silver anniversary field has buoyant future
The Brae complex is currently celebrating 25 years of production, with substantially more oil and gas recovered from the various sister fields than anyone imagined was possible when Marathon chanced upon this asset in May, 1975, while drilling well 16/07-1 - the first on licence P108.
All aboard Starlight charity express
TAKE two Irish brothers - one super-fit, the other not - chuck in a bike and an ancient steam road engine and see if they can get both vehicles from John O'Groats to Land's End in seven days.
New facility boosts gas hydrates research
A NEW flow loop commissioned in Australia is expected to help researchers find solutions to predict and control gas hydrates formation in offshore oil and production pipelines.
NW Hutton acreage for sale despite abandonment ops
BP and its partners in the UK North Sea NW Hutton field are offering 100% of their interest, lock, stock and more than half full barrel to anyone interested in the abandoned asset and surrounding acreage.
Market for floaters looks set to boom
Production ships now dominate the global floating production scene and their market is set to boom to the tune of $34billion of investment over the period 2008 through 2012.
Piper Alpha: 20 years on and the laws on safety keep evolving
As the North Sea industry marks the 20-year anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, it seems fitting to take stock of the resultant changes, and in particular to note raised awareness of health and safety issues and ask whether all lessons may have been fully learned?
Government must step up to the plate
As part of Scottish Government's engagement with the business, I attended a recent meeting with Jim Mathers, Minister for Enterprise, Education and Tourism, and local business leaders, most notably from Oil & Gas UK, Talisman, Shell, Venture, Apache, Total and PSN.
Pity the tanker drivers’ strike wasn’t longer
The tanker drivers' strike was too short. Here was a genuine opportunity to give people a real taste of what life is going to be like in just a few short years if we continue to do nothing about liquid fuels, and we blew it.
Petrobras to order 12 new ultra-deepwater drilling rigs
PETROBRAS is ordering 12 new ultra-deepwater drilling rigs capable of operating in waters 2,400-3,000m of water.
So who’s the real donkey, Broon?
The price of donkeys in the Yozgat district of Central Turkey has increased sevenfold as local people are giving up the use of tractors because of rocketing fuel prices and substituting them with a centuries-old means of getting about.
Scots winning through in Venezuela
Just over a year ago, Venezuela's then minister for Europe, Rodrigo Chaves, visited Scotland and suggested to me that it would be appropriate to have a stronger direct link between our two nations.
Russians planning subsea drilling rig
GAZPROM is working with a former builder of Russian nuclear submarines to develop a subsea drilling system capable of drilling beneath the pack ice of Russia's Arctic.
Sevan scores $1.5billion double whammy in Brazil and India
Norwegian company Sevan Marine can press ahead with building two more of its innovative drilling rigs thanks to winning contracts worth more than $1.5billion - one with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of India, the other with Petrobras of Brazil.
E&A drilling storming ahead on UKCS
Halfway through 2008 and it is timely to make a comparison with 2007 activity levels. It turns out that UK exploration drilling has almost doubled compared with the same period last year - 15 spuds versus 29.