WITH little over a month to go before 2008 wraps, 68 exploration & appraisal wells have been started to date and, discounting sidetracks, the spuds already exceed 2007's tally by one well - the highest count since 1997.
ABERDEEN company Drillers.com, which is behind an online resource for oilfield personnel, has just been awarded a West Africa contract with Rodeo Development, an exploration and production junior.
PETROBRAS insists it is on schedule with its programme to recruit 40 deepwater mobile drilling units despite being late with publishing its five-year plan from 2009.
MORE than 100 guests attended the annual Robert Gordon University entrepreneurship dinner in Aberdeen's Marcliffe Hotel.
THERE'S nothing like being prepared for an emergency in the energy business.
SONSUB, a unit of Saipem-Eni, has added the multipurpose ROV support vessel, Bourbon Pearl, to its fleet. This vessel has lately been performing electromagnetic (EM) offshore exploration for PetroMarker in the Barents Sea operating out of Hammerfest, in Norway.
BOUTIQUE upstream venture capital fund Epi-V is moving into hydrocarbons exploration and production after committing to invest £10million to appraise two existing onshore gas discoveries in northern England.
TGS-NOPEC Geophysical has buried the hatchet with Wavefield Inseis over their planned merger and, as a result, CGGVeritas has stepped in and made a paper offer worth $310million for the latter.
NATIONAL Oilwell Varco and Schlumberger have committed to forging a joint venture that combines their respective and complementary expertise in the manufacturing and technology development of wired drill-string telemetry systems.
HALLIN Marine has been awarded a $4.2million contract for the provision of saturation diving services offshore Malaysia for the 2009 season.
Anchor-handling operations are high risk, especially when mobile drilling units are being prepared to shift location. The vulnerability of anchor-handling vessels is clearly demonstrated by the loss of the Bourbon Dolphin west of Shetland in April, 2007, and the Stevns Power offshore West Africa in 2003.
NORWEGIAN group DOF Subsea has been contracted by EnCana to provide specialist subsea services from its multipurpose support vessel, the Skandi Bergen, on the Deep Panuke gas project offshore Nova Scotia. The company said its contract was estimated to be worth about $6.3million.
EXXONMOBIL is entering the Black sea via a licensing with TPAO, of Turkey, covering two deepwater blocks.
BRAZILIAN hydrocarbons regulator ANP estimates that the pre-salt reserves in blocks currently held by Petrobras and other operators are in the range 50-70billion barrels oil equivalent.
THE IEA says Saudi Arabia will continue to play a vital role in balancing the global oil market and that its willingness to make timely investment in new production will be a key determinant of future price trends.
SWORD'S view is that a robust supply chain is fundamental to a healthy North Sea - and fundamental to Aberdeen long-term. But he is worried that the birth rate is now too low to enable the next generation of SME babies to come through and survive.
Developments in Kuwait are concentrated on the Sabriyah and the Umm Niqa fields, where a total of 50,000bpd of NGL capacity is being added, with completion expected in 2011. Another project at the Sabriyah field should add 160,000bpd more oil production by 2015.
SWORD admits that P/E faces its own set of challenges, and one is access to capital.
Homing in on exploration & production companies, 3i's head of oil, gas and power pointed out that everything was great in the petroleum garden with $140-plus oil. That meant every project was economic at $100 a barrel.
THE discovery that has done more than any other in recent years to draw attention to the latent potential of West of Shetland is surely Rosebank/Lochnagar, over which there has been much speculation as to size - mostly in the 400-600mmb range, but could be larger, with the prospect of a future separate gas find in the same locale.
Energy has explored the impact of the credit crunch and stock markets rout with the energy bank, Simmons & Company International. But how does private equity view the current, and possibly deepening, shambles?
EVEN allowing for Total bringing Laggan/Tormore onstream, BP will remain cock o' the walk West of Shetland as operator of the Clair, Foinaven and Schiehallion fields. On November 26, Foinaven notched up 11 years of production. By any measure, this, the very first development West of Shetland, has been a success story, including attracting investment in infill drilling, pursuing satellite opportunities - notably East Foinaven I
2009 is primed to become the most exciting year ever on the UK Atlantic Frontier, both on the development front and in the hunt for, and confirmation of, new resources.
Turning to OMV, we reported in November that the company was seeking to farm-down "before doing battle" with its West of Shetland target, Tornado, hoping to divest a large chunk before starting drilling early in the new year.
The connection between economic activity and the oil price is a fairly obvious one. As economic activity declines, as it is now, then so will energy demand - and the cost of a barrel will follow it down.