A CRUCIAL task for Curran and his team is ensuring a pipeline of North Sea drillable prospects, exploration successes, acquisitions and projects as they are currently responsible for about 25% of Lundin's current 180million boe global reserves base.
Last month, I suggested that some facts and statistics might help to tune the mind to the seriousness of the retirement problem faced industry - and not just Big Oil.
BACK in the mid-1990s, Canadian group Talisman blazed its way into the North Sea via an asset deal with BP. However, one of the four so-called MAST assets, Thistle, was rejected.
ONE of the big challenges faced by Lundin with both Heather and Thistle is platform integrity. A lot of cash has been spent in this direction in a bid to ensure they remain both safe and efficient long-term.
ANOTHER current highlight in the Lundin portfolio for Curran is Peik, a mid-1980s gas-condensate discovery that has lain on various shelves since.
STARTING salary up to £25,000, plus "superb benefits" - so says British Energy in its latest advertising designed to attract attention from the latest crop of university graduates.
Read Well Services has announced a new scheme to fast-track graduates into careers within the company's Petroleum Technology Group (PTG) and has already taken on the first cohort of six.
THE University of East Anglia is considering the idea of launching engineering degree programmes following an attack by George Morrison, MD of Aquaterra Energy.
A SOLAR-POWERED ECG (electrocardiograph) machine has been developed for third-world and trouble-areas use. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology student Felix Adamczyk says it will be affordable, robust and energy-efficient.
AN AMERICAN study suggests that a healthier diet and a return to traditional farming could help reduce energy consumption by up to 50%.
FOR many years, the hunt has been on to find ways of releasing hydrogen cheaply and in large quantities through electrolysis so that the gas can be used as a fuel. The latest to claim it is at the threshold of a clean, renewable method of production is a team of US scientists at Pennsylvania State University.
A GROUP of American scientists at Missouri University of Science and Technology is developing a portable, hydrogen-generating power system to power everything from laptops to communications gear for soldiers in the battlefield.
A global initiative to promote shared knowledge of flexible pipe in the subsea sector is being hailed a success.
BRAZIL'S Petrobras has booked 22 years' worth of work with Transocean that will soak up four of the US group's rigs and bring in revenues estimated at some $3billion. And it has won a further $1billion of work in the US Gulf of Mexico. Rigs to go on long-term hire to Petrobras are the Sedco 707, Sedco 710, Deepwater Navigator and Transocean Driller.
The deepwater rig construction boom seems unstoppable, with another crop of orders placed over the past few weeks in Singapore and with Norwegian names once again to the fore as clients, notably Sevan Marine, which has ordered another pair of Sevan 650 drilling units from COSCO of Singapore.
During the holiday season in 2007, there was no let-up in drilling activity. But what a difference a year makes as, this July, only three wells were spudded - all appraisals. That's substantially below the count in 2007.
IF TRAVEL really broadens the mind, the president of the Scomi Group's oilfield services division, Chris Pianca, should be on Mastermind every week.
ABERDEEN Art Gallery was the setting for the 20th anniversary party of oil&gas consultant Genesis, whose worldwide empire includes main bases in London, Paris, Perth, Western Australia, and Aberdeen.
EXHIBITING at Offshore Northern Seas? Or perhaps you're planning a bit of hospitality but have failed to do anything about it.
Norwegian drilling company Awilco has fallen prey to COSL, China's largest offshore oil services group, in a deal worth $2.5billion.
LUNDIN Petroleum's Caspian Sea Morskaya-1 discovery well in the Russian sector has been successfully tested at a combined flowrate of 2,500 barrels per day of 32 deg API oil.
A CONSORTIUM comprising BW Offshore units Advanced Production & Loading (APL) and SBM Offshore have secured a contract with Total for the engineering, procurement, supply, construction and installation (EPSCI) of the oil loading system on the Pazflor project offshore Angola in deepwater block 17. The contract is worth about $100million and the project is due for delivery early-2011.
BP IS at last poised to start development of its Liberty field offshore Alaska, three years after making the decision to press ahead and 11 years following discovery in 1997.
WEST Africa: Liberia's ministry of land, mines, and energy has launched a new licensing round in which five offshore blocks are to be offered to the highest bidder.
NOF Energy has signed what it calls a global partner agreement with the South Africa Oil & Gas Alliance (SAOGA).