Scottish Enterprise has appointed Melfort Campbell, chairman and CEO of Imes Group in Aberdeen, as the joint chair of its Oil & Gas Industry Advisory Group alongside Jim Mather, Scotland's Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism.
ENGINEER and entrepreneur Tony Trapp has launched a new business focused on offshore wind. Its name is O-Power.
RenewableUK has rejected the UK oil&gas industry's three-day baseline safety competence standard in favour of pursuing what is says is a set of standards better suited to offshore wind.
REBUILDING the remaining Thistle drilling package was not easy, nor was it ever likely to be, given that it had stood idle for 20 years in a marine environment.
According to BP, 42 years is how long the world's remaining proved oil reserves will last. The company also believes that, based on 2008 consumption levels, natural gas reserves will last 60 years and coal supplies for 122 years. The calculations assume constant 2008 consumption rates.
In April 2010, parliament passed a new UK Bribery Act which is expected to come into effect in autumn this year. This legislation creates a more effective legal framework for combating bribery, replacing a number of fragmented and complex offences, many of which had been in place for more than 100 years.
We are told that the still new Cameron-Clegg coalition is about to have a quangos bonfire, or at least a few select ones are said to be for the chop - green ones, to be precise. But maybe they won't burn so easily - bit like green willow, really.
I have thought a lot in recent weeks about two visits I made as UK energy minister a few years ago, both to installations recently acquired by BP.
Late last year, Dave Workman resurfaced as CEO of energy contractor RBG, having stayed out of the limelight following the failure of the Ardmore field development in the North Sea and the subsequent collapse, in 2006, of Tuscan Energy, which was, in large measure, his creation.
IT IS almost incredible that the mistakes of one person or a few individuals on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico could virtually destroy a massive company such as BP. As I write, the company's shares have fallen to a 14-year low, with about £65billion, or $90billion, of the company's stock-market value having been wiped out since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April.
Norwegian company Odfjell Drilling has secured a $50million East Africa contract for its currently completing sixth-generation deepwater and harsh-environment semi-submersible drilling rig, Deepsea Stavanger.
North Sea veteran Thistle was discovered nearly 40 years ago, in 1973, and was declared commercial before completion of the first two appraisal wells. The extension of the field into block 211/19 was confirmed by well 211/19-1, drilled in 1974, and the field was subsequently unitised.
NORWEGIAN company EMGS, which is the arch rival to Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping (OHM) of Aberdeen, has secured a multi-year controlled source electromagnetic imaging contract worth a minimum of $150million from one of the world's largest oil companies. The 3D electromagnetic campaign will employ one of EMGS's purpose-built 3D EM vessels continuously throughout the contract period, so providing substantially improved vessel utilisation levels.
INTEGRATED Subsea Services (ISS) has established ISS Africa through a strategic joint venture with South African diving company Cape Diving.
More than 20 years after its discovery and five years since Statoil pushed the development button, the Norwegian North Sea Gjoa field will soon begin production.
INTERNATIONAL energy services group Weatherford has developed a rigless integrated well service package at the heart of which is a capillary string deployment system for chemical injection into live gas wells where water is an issue. The primary target initially will be wells in the Southern Gas Basin sector of the UK North Sea.
DESPITE the supposed massive potential for job creation - up to 145,000 according to a report prepared for the Offshore Valuation Group by the Boston Consulting Group - the ability of the UK supply chain to cope is called into question.
Electricity generated using renewables can be transformed into a substitute for natural gas, according to new European research.
The pace of exploration and appraisal new spuds on the UKCS continues to pick up.
While the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was undoubtedly a human tragedy and remains an environmental disaster, BP shareholders nevertheless have a need to assess the damage done to their investment.
I have often written in this column about the importance of the mutual hold harmless indemnities which are found in many oil&gas agreements and which protect a party to a contract against the risks of damaging the other party's property or injuring its people.
I have been in Algeria recently working on a study assessing the potential to increase the country's gas exports to the European Union.
In what is a UK first, The Robert Gordon University has gained Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) approval for a suite of engineering and business masters-level modules for use in further learning plans.
ENGINEERS are at a premium in the offshore industry. One such individual is Peter Brannen, of Aker Solutions.
Hydrogen would command a key role in future renewable-energy technologies if a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it could be developed.
