Subsea engineering and training company Jee said yesterday it had won a contract extension with BP to provide the oil major with a range of maintenance and inspection services in the North Sea. Jee, which has offices at Tonbridge in Kent, London and Westhill, near Aberdeen, has worked with BP for more than two decades in locations including, Angola, Azerbaijan, Norway, Trinidad and the UK.
Oil and gas training organisation Opito yesterday cautioned the industry against using low oil prices as an excuse for cutting corners of safety training. Opito’s chief executive, David Doig, issued the warning as the training body revealed the line-up for its sixth annual safety exhibition. The Opito Safety and Competence Conference (OSCC) will feature presentations from the likes of Shell’s deputy head of safety, Tony Paul and Kevin Myers of the Health and Safety Executive.
BAFTA-nominated geologist and TV presenter Iain Stewart will deliver the keynote speech at this year’s Offshore Decommissioning Conference, organisers said yesterday. The two-day event, which has already sold out, will focus on the importance of ensuring decommissioning is as efficient as possible and will draw from the lessons learned by other sectors, including nuclear energy.
A North Sea oil and gas pioneer yesterday urged the Scottish Government not to squander taxpayers’ money on further research into underground coal gasification (UCG). It comes after the government slapped a moratorium on UCG and appointed a scientist to carry out an independent assessment into the potential impacts of the technology. The government also widened the scope of research that is being conducted into fracking, which was the subject of a separate planning ban introduced in January.
An Aberdeen-based marine and offshore consultancy and safety firm yesterday said it had struck deals worth more than £2.5million – and is launching a recruitment drive to support its growth. Seacroft Marine Consultants put the recent successes down to its efforts to provide better value for money at a time when North Sea clients are scrambling to cut costs amid the oil price slump. While some of the agreements were with customers who have been with Seacroft since it was founded in 1995, several new operators have also handed it work.
New research ordered by a North Sea industry pioneer says the development of a fully-fledged industry that taps underground coal reserves could generate £13billion and 12,000 jobs for the UK economy. And the study claims Scotland would stand to retain almost half of these spoils. The independent report was commissioned by Cluff Natural Resources (CNR), whose chairman, Algy Cluff, was involved in the discovery of the Buchan field nearly 40 years ago. London-listed CNR plans to create the UK’s first Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) project.
Aberdeen was the worst performer in Scotland for staff appointments in August, a new report showed.
Robert Gordon University (RGU) and the Mexican Government said yesterday they had agreed to an oil and gas industry knowledge swap. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was announced at Offshore Europe in Aberdeen and follows Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s visit to the Granite City in March. Under the pact, the Mexican energy ministry and RGU will share information and seek opportunities to support the training of Mexicans for the oil and gas industry. RGU will be included on the list of preferred universities for Mexican scholarships.
Offshore caterers will vote on strike action after employers went back on a pay deal. Union bosses yesterday accused offshore catering companies of refusing “point blank” to honour a 1.3% pay raise that had been agreed for this year. The Unite union said the position held by the Catering Offshore Trade Association (COTA), which represents six offshore catering firms, had left it with no choice and advised its members to vote in favour of strike action.
Europe's small and medium-sized oil companies have forward-sold more crude than in previous years, ramping up their defences against a scenario in which prices stay weak for longer than expected. Hedging future oil output against market volatility is a well-rehearsed practice among smaller producers but as prices remain historically low, they have shielded themselves more heavily than usual from a further downturn. Second-quarter results figures showed that oil companies, including North Sea operators Ithaca and Premier Oil, have increased their hedging positions compared with the previous year.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has been appointed chairman of state-controlled oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, the company said on Tuesday.
A strong Dubai price has again put top oil exporter Saudi Arabia in a dilemma over whether to raise the prices of crude it sells to Asia to match the benchmark's strength, or to cut to stay competitive in an oversupplied market. Record purchases of October-loading crude by Chinaoil during a mechanism that sets the price of Middle East crude in Asia strengthened the benchmark, even as other grades are being pressed lower by a global glut. Saudi Arabia is due to release October crude prices later this week, setting the trend for Iranian, Kuwaiti and Iraqi crude bound for Asia.
Iran expects to finalise the wording for a new model for international oil contracts in the next three weeks, the oil minister said on Monday, as Tehran seeks to boost recovery from its fields with the help of foreign companies. The ministry is expected to present the new oil contracts to investors at a conference in London in December, ahead of a likely lifting of international sanctions in 2016. "Iran has put together a new model for oil contacts that allows access to regional and international markets and paves the way for long-term strategic cooperation with major companies," Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the Shana news agency.
Italian energy group Eni is open to selling a stake in its mega gas discovery in Egypt, as it has done for another gas field in Mozambique, its chief executive said in a newspaper interview published on Monday.
Oil and gas firms are among the worst offenders for unnecessarily long annual reports, according to PwC. The global professional services giant said yesterday businesses of all kinds risked putting off investors by burying gems of information in lengthy reports. Documents from oil and gas companies weigh in at a hefty 172 pages on average, the fifth longest out of 18 sectors covered by a PwC’s Searching for Buried Treasure study.
China's falling auto sales have been at the forefront of concerns that its economy is slowing much faster than expected, weighing on oil prices. Yet moves to cut the cost of car-financing as part of economic stimulus efforts this week may not be enough to drive up auto sales or boost demand for oil, analysts said. Domestic car sales have fallen since April, dropping by 7 percent, or more than 100,000 cars, in July from a year ago and likely putting out of reach even a revised 2015 vehicle growth target of 3 percent, down from 7 percent previously.
Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh blamed the latest drop in oil prices on some members of OPEC and questioned whether any OPEC emergency meeting would reach an agreement, the oil ministry's news agency Shana reported. "To balance the oil price... OPEC members should balance their production. An emergency meeting has been requested and we don't have a problem with that," Shana cited Zanganeh as saying.
Should Shell push ahead with its $70 billion bid for BG in the face of cheaper oil? The tumbling oil price – down by a fifth since the merger was announced in April - has raised fears that Shell shareholders might balk at the 50 percent premium the Anglo-Dutch energy group agreed to pay for its smaller rival. But while the price tag may look bigger today on some metrics, so should the cost savings.
PetroChina, China's biggest oil and gas producer, reported a 63 percent drop in its first-half profit, with earnings upstream and in the marketing segment both taking a hit from lower prices.
The head of Statoil yesterday cautioned oil and gas companies against decommissioning too early and said the Norwegian firm’s £4.5billion North Sea Mariner development was on track. Statoil president and chief executive Eldar Saetre said there were a lot more resources to be found but costs needed to be restructured in a “fundamental and sustainable” way to ensure their recovery. He was speaking after his first visit to the Norwegian oil giant’s new regional base in Kingswells, Aberdeen.
China's top offshore oil producer CNOOC said its consolidated first-half net profit fell 56.1 percent, as a precipitous drop in crude prices offset higher production.
Oil companies competing in the next phase of Mexico's historic Round One auction will know the minimum level of profits demanded by the government prior to the auction, the sector regulator said on Tuesday, in a bid to raise investor interest. The oil regulator, known by its Spanish-language acronym CNH, also said it will offer companies the possibility to conduct additional exploration and extraction beyond reserves that have already been discovered. The changes are aimed at avoiding a repeat of the first phase of the auction, in which the government missed its own modest expectations, awarding just two of 14 contracts offered.
Cash-strapped National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) will slash its work force by over two-thirds and its board of directors will be replaced as it grapples with a fall in the price of oil, the country's president said on Tuesday. The West African country does not produce any oil or natural gas but has placed its hopes in potential reserves offshore in deep and ultra-deep waters, following the example of Gulf of Guinea neighbours Ghana and Nigeria, Africa's biggest producer. But Liberia has been hit hard by a rapid decline in world oil prices that has led many companies to reassess their exploration strategies.
Oil pioneer Algy Cluff said yesterday his company’s plans to tap coal reserves under the Firth of Forth were in keeping with the concept of Scottish independence. And in announcing the first half results for Cluff Natural Resources (CNR), Mr Cluff criticised the previous UK Government’s support for North Sea windfarms. Mr Cluff, chairman and chief executive of CNR, said large windfarms blocked access to gas fields and sucked up taxpayers’ money.
North Sea industry bosses are rapidly running out of time in which to reach an agreement with offshore workers and avert a strike action ballot.
