Crew rescued from cargo ship after colliding with gas tanker
Eleven crew members have been rescued from a Dutch cargo ship which sank off the Belgian coast after colliding with a gas tanker.
Picture Gallery: Energy Ball is glittering success
They dined, they wined and then danced the evening away as the Press and Journal Energy Ball showed once again why it is the top night on the north-east’s social calendar.
Mars and Kellogs call for energy efficiency, climate change action
Leading food and drink companies have come together to call for action on climate change, warning rising temperatures threaten global food supplies.
Offshore contracting’s perfect storm
Helen Dickson, a corporate transactional lawyer with Burness Paull, explains how the offshore contracting industry is being hit by a perfect storm of lower margins, higher risk and squeezed staff numbers.
Glencore fuels FTSE 100 rebound
London’s FTSE 100 Index surged 2.2% higher as a profit upgrade from supermarket Sainsbury’s and gains from hard-hit miner Glencore spurred on the latest blue chip rebound.
Solar panel firm Helms fined £200k for nuisance marketing calls
A green energy company found to have made millions of marketing calls has been fined £200,000 after a ruling that it deliberately broke regulations, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said.
S&P’s 500 index makes first gain in six days
A rebound in the healthcare sector helped steady stocks on Wall Street, pushing the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to its first gain in six days.
Big difference over number of complaints about energy suppliers
Consumers have made nearly 20 times as many complaints per 100,000 customers about some energy companies as they have about the best-performing suppliers, according to Citizens Advice.
Jeremy Corbyn discusses austerity, Trident, Isis and oil
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the SNP of wearing an “anti-austerity badge” while pursuing policies which continue it, or could make it worse in future.
Councils urged to switch pension fund investments away from fossil fuels
UK councils have invested £14billion of pension funds in fossil fuels, an average of £218 per resident across the country, analysis suggests.
Big six energy giants ‘lose 660,000 customers in a year’
Disgruntled customers are ditching the energy giants in their droves as smaller independent suppliers continue to erode their market share, research suggests.
Markets sink into the red as commodity stocks tumble
London’s FTSE 100 Index slumped below the 6000 mark as volatility returned to haunt markets across Europe after a sharp sell-off among commodity stocks.
UK car recalls fear after Volkswagen admits rigging emissions tests
Millions of cars on UK roads could be recalled as a probe into rigged emissions tests on Volkswagen models in the US threatens to reach Europe, according to a transport lobby group.
BT leads apprentice agenda
More young people should be encouraged to pursue apprenticeships as an attractive, viable career path, an industry leader has said. Fraser Rowberry, who heads up BT’s local network business Openreach in Scotland, said any view of apprenticeships being considered a fallback option to university couldn’t be further from the truth.
CBI chief warns over Government’s “mixed messages” on environment
The Government risks sending a “worrying signal” to businesses by rolling back on policies to support clean technology, business leaders have warned.
Video: AVC teams up with Technip for Westbrae subsea well extension project
Full service media and communications company, AVC Media has completed a major project providing video and animation services for world leading project management, engineering and construction company, Technip.
Opinion: Oil price and UEFA
A few days ago, while reading my newspaper, I found myself surprisingly absorbed with the further decline of the oil price, but even more with the wave of redundancies announced by major oil and gas companies. A few pages on, in a more interesting for me landscape, I was reading through the major transfers made this summer in the Premier League, when it occurred to me that in fact the two sectors share similar characteristics and that the current football industry could be a forewarning to the current oil crisis.
Offshore Europe 2015: GE Oil & Gas and Statoil strike deal
Wellhead equipment built in Montrose will be used worldwide by Statoil after it awarded GE Oil & Gas a four-year framework agreement with the option of two, two-year extensions.
Infographic: OGUK’s Economic Report by the figures
Oil and gas firms in the UK are on track to cut £2billion from their cost bases as the industry grapples with low global commodity prices, new research has revealed.
Lundin gets go ahead for wildcat well
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has given Lundin Norway the go-ahead for its North Sea wildcat well.
Bibby completes Endeavour North Sea decom contracts
Bibby Offshore has this year delivered two multimillion pound decommissioning contracts to the UK Continental Shelf.
Technip tackles milestone Schiehallion project
The BP operated Schiehallion field first produced oil in the 90s and was estimated to contain more than 2 billion barrels of oil. In 2011, BP and its partners sanctioned the Quad 204 project which, by replacing the existing FPSO, renewing subsea infrastructure and drilling more wells, made it possible to extend the field life to 2036 or beyond, and produce a further 400mm bbl.
Opinion: Grey beards, novices, and missing generations
Cast your mind back only 12 months, the oil price is sitting at US$107, the scene has been set – the offshore oil industry in the North Sea is finally making a real commitment to its most important asset – people. Major investment in attracting, training and retaining talent is top of the agenda; the industry is making major strides to become the sector of choice for the best and brightest professionals creating a platform for rewarding careers that offered prosperity, stability and security. All the talk in Aberdeen is about skills shortage and the need to hire more and more people. How things change in one short year, the Brent oil price has plummeted and continues to trade sub US$ 50, there is little or no investment in exploration, few major projects have been sanctioned and the operating cost base remains far too high in the North Sea. To compound matters the talent void in the oil business of a year ago has not gone away just because oil prices are low but still the industry is hell bent on destroying the very fragile fabric that remains. 2015 as in previous low oil price eras is generating plenty of noise from all camps on the subject of balancing the need to reduce headcount whilst retaining talent, but looming large for all of us in Aberdeen, the oil capital of Europe, is the real daunting prospect of a 1986 déjà vu when oil prices collapsed. Managerial, technical, professional and offshore workers were unceremoniously jettisoned in huge numbers with dreams and futures in tatters. Young and inexperienced oilfield professionals the first to be cast aside leaving Aberdeen to become a city in severe recession whilst the rest of the UK prospered.
Developments ‘devour countryside’
Thousands of acres of the countryside have been swallowed up by development in the past few years, new land use maps have revealed. Wetlands were among the areas of landscape which were lost between 2006 and 2012, prompting concerns from wildlife experts about the disappearance of important habitat and the natural services such as flood protection they provide. In total 225,200 hectares or almost 870 square miles of the UK, around 1% of the country, showed changes in land use over the period, according to land cover maps launched by the University of Leicester and consultancy Specto Natura. The main change was clear-felling of more than 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of coniferous forest, largely in Scotland and Wales where much of the plantation forest is found, while around half the area was regrowing or had been replanted. Around 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of mixed forest were also clear felled, according to the mapping which used satellite data from 2006 and 2012 and is based on 44 land cover and land use classes. The study also revealed that more than 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of forest was converted to “artificial surfaces” such as buildings, industrial sites and roads, while 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of agricultural land was lost to the spread of towns and cities. Wetlands were also lost to development, with more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of such areas vanishing under artificial surfaces.
Bob Keiller: Walking on the moon
Only two weeks after a pilot was killed during a test flight of a prototype vehicle that should one day allow paying passengers to travel briefly into space, it was fascinating to see that scientists had successfully landed a probe on a comet some 300 million miles away from Earth. The history of space travel is marked with tragedies and illuminated by spectacular achievements. The first manned flight into space by Yuri Gagarin in 1961, the Apollo 8 crew who first saw the dark side of the moon in 1968, and probably one of the highest points in human history when Neil Armstrong was first to set foot on the moon on 21 July 1969 just to name a few.