Economic exploitation of stranded reserves often calls for the use of long subsea tie-backs in deep water, but this can present significant challenges with respect to flow assurance and the associated requirements for insulation of pipelines and subsea hardware.
It's summertime and maybe the last thing on our minds is seasonal flu. However, now is the time to give some thought to the passing of the seasons and the inevitable arrival of winter and accompanying seasonal-flu outbreaks.
Several recent exploration successes show there is still much to play for in the UKCS. With drilling maintaining the levels of the previous month, the outlook for 2010 is potentially as good as any year since 2006, except for 2008.
Drillers are up in arms about the July 12 suspension of drilling in the US Gulf of Mexico. The International Association of Drilling Contractors "unequivocally opposes" the decision, saying the "blanket, industry-wide edict is contrary to precedent and abrogates lawful offshore leases".
As BP gets to grips with the Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that continues to generate such a furore in the US, both the politicians and the oilmen are beginning to look to the future.
Weatherford is to show off its Multi Functional Compact Well Maintenance System this month (August 10-12) at the company's technology & training centre in Aberdeen.
IT MIGHT seem a bit early to flag this but, once the summer break is over, time will fly to the next Energy Institute dinner in March next year when there will be a speaker rematch between Alex Salmond and Bob Keiller.
WOOD Group units JP Kenny and MCS Kenny, together with Nigerian engineering company Dover Engineering, are completing the first comprehensive front end engineering design (FEED) undertaken locally in Nigeria.
INTEGRITY is a huge issue for the North Sea as the province slips ever deeper into maturity and operators strive to squeeze more oil& gas from their assets.
NORWAY'S Statoil has awarded Aibel a £250million (2.7billion NOK) contract to build the topsides for the Gudrun platform in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
FOLLOWING almost two years of engineering, procurement and project preparations, Dutch heavy-lift specialist Dockwise has completed the first of two floatovers of semi-submersibles ultimately destined for the massive Shtokman project in the Russian sector of the Barents Sea.
AKER Solutions has won a contract with Eni Norge for the design and supply of an on-vessel mooring system for the Goliat floating production, storage and offloading vessel in the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea. The total contract value is in the order of $24million.
TALISMAN Energy, together with San Leon Energy, is planning to drill three wells in northern Poland next year to evaluate potential shale-gas deposits in three large blocks in the Baltic Basin.
MORE than 90 days have passed since the fatal Deepwater Horizon explosion, consequent oil spill and subsequent temporary capping of the Macondo well in the US Gulf of Mexico.
Mechserv of Arbroath, a specialist offshore design and manufacturing company, is in the final stages of completing the development of a diesel-electric generating set that the company claims is a ground-breaker.
EWAN Drummond, who has been driving the redevelopment since 2005, describes Valhall as "technically bold" and the biggest brownfield project undertaken by BP.
IT IS two years since ONS was last held in Stavanger, and it is an opportune time to review what has happened in the Norwegian oil&gas industry since then. Most of it has been good news.
Unless it's the Munsters, I don't like horror on the box. Even if there's nothing else on, I still won't watch the stuff. I hit the off button instead. Not so the horror story that is Macondo. Watching the joint US Department of the Interior Department and US Coast Guard inquiry makes compelling viewing - it possesses a macabre fascination.
How serious is either Scotland or the UK about developing our renewable energy potential? To listen to the endless rhetoric about "the Saudi Arabia of renewables" or to judge by the setting of ever more ambitious targets by Edinburgh and Whitehall for conveniently distant dates, the question might seem redundant.
On the morning after the Piper Alpha explosion in 1988, I went offshore for a couple of weeks working directly for Occidental running an ROV survey and inspection spread.
Valhall is a sea of lights and a hive of activity as hook-up operations gather momentum on what is one of the largest offshore brownfield projects ever attempted - anywhere.
One of the biggest integrated services contracts in the UK North Sea is likely to be awarded in October by the oil giant, Shell.
Aberdeen's Craig Group is investing about £30million in a further expansion of its offshore emergency-response and rescue-vessel fleet.
The distinctive profiles and rich blue and white liveries of Bibby Offshore's dive-support/construction ships, Sapphire and Topaz, are quite unmistakable and easy to spot when they are in Aberdeen or lying out in the bay.
WILTON Engineering Services of Teeside has successfully built and delivered one of the world's largest pipeline lay towers to construction, heavy-lift and pipelay specialist Saipem.
