CARBON emissions from air travel could be reduced thanks to a new collaboration between engineers from the Universities of Bath and Bristol and the aerospace industry. The £1.4million project will investigate new ways of using composite materials for wing panels in aircraft. The research will be using carbon fibres that are curved within flat plates to produce damage-tolerant, buckle-free structures.
RESEARCHERS at the University of Leeds have uncovered new clues to the origins of life on Earth. The team found that a compound known as pyrophosphite may have been an important energy source for primitive life forms. There are several conflicting theories on how life on Earth emerged from inanimate matter billions of years ago - a process known as abiogenesis.
With pressure to increase production yields, drive efficiencies, extend asset life and tap into smaller and deeper fields, technological innovation has become an integral component of the oil&gas industry.
ITF, the Industry Technology Facilitator, has issued two new calls for proposals on the topics of unconventional gas resources and enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
These days, we see so many conflicting article and news items about alcohol that it gets really confusing - "red wine can be good for you"; "white wine can damage your teeth"; "Guinness may help prevent blood clots".
OILFIELD technical website Drillers.com has launched three oilfield-specific electronic documents which supplement the EU Europass standard introduced in 2005 to help people make their skills and qualifications easily understood across different countries.
GustoMSC expects Keppel FELS in Singapore to have the first of the innovative "Bully" class drillships ready this summer for delivery to owners Frontier Drilling and Shell.
PGS has named its new 106m 3D seismic vessel the PGS Apollo, which has just been completed at a Spanish shipyard in Vigo.
THE International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) wants a reprieve for drilling operations in the shallow waters of the US Gulf of Mexico. All new drilling in the US Gulf is under a Washington interdiction scheduled to last several weeks due to concerns about why the rig, Deepwater Horizon, caught fire and sank following a drilling-related incident on a BP-operated exploration well.
EGYPT'S Nile Delta Basin holds some 223trillion cu ft (mean estimate) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the US Geological Survey.
FALKLAND Oil & Gas (FOGL) has started drilling its first exploration well offshore the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic with the spudding of the Toroa F61/5-1 well on licence PL15. FOGL said it began drilling operations on May 31 on the Toroa well with the Diamond Offshore semi-submersible drilling rig, Ocean Guardian.
BAKER Hughes has acquired Siberia-based Oilpump Services (OPS), the second largest electrical submersible pumping (ESP) systems service company in Western Siberia.
AQUATERRA Energy has been awarded a $3million contract from a "large joint-venture petroleum company" (BP and ENI unit IEOC) in Egypt to provide a high-pressure drilling riser for use in development work during 2010 and 2011 in the Mediterranean Sea.
PROVIDENCE Resources has completed a technical assessment of the heavy oil resource that appears to underlie the Ardmore gas field in block SEL2/07 in the northern Celtic Sea Basin offshore Ireland.
THE US government has ordered the break-up of the Minerals Management Service.
PROVIDENCE Resources claims that it has identified a large structure off the east coast of Ireland that could harbour hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.
RWE Dea is "now at the beginning of key field development work" in the North Sea - Breagh and Clipper South, plus BP-operated Devenick.
THE big money is on oil - that is the primary focus in Iraq. As indicated above, current output is about 2million bpd, but the ambition is 12million bpd within six or seven years.
James McCallum, co-founder of Senergy, is hardly your typical North Sea heritage oilman. For a start, the Scottish company's CEO bases himself in the Middle East and not at HQ in Aberdeen.
ROWAN Companies has taken delivery of the first of a new class of super-jack-up - appropriately named the Rowan EXL 1.
There appears to be a significant gap between the basic standard of survival training for UK offshore wind power when compared with the oil&gas industry - one day versus three.
HALLIBURTON has apparently successfully completed field tests of novel fluid sampling-while-drilling technology for BG in Norway.
Maritime energy contractor Hallin Marine has commissioned a $110million, ground-breaking semi-submersible, subsea-operations vessel to be named the CSS Derwent.
Check out who in the UK oil&gas supply chain is busy in Iraq, either bidding for business or working on contracts, and they are like hen's teeth, according to Gavin Jones and Adrian Green of business consultancy Upper Quartile.
The Obama administration has halted all deepwater drilling activities in US waters, effectively shutting down operations at 33 locations in the US Gulf of Mexico.
