A wide-ranging review of the high cost of electricity in the north and north-east will be carried out by the UK Government following a campaign by Energy Voice's sister publication, the Press and Journal.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell revealed last night that there "will be an opportunity to change things" over the coming months.
Families in the Highlands and islands, Grampian and Tayside currently pay the highest power bills in the UK because of a regional system for distribution costs.
An offshore engineering company founded by one of the north-east’s best-known businessmen is launching a Marine Safety Systems (MSS) division following a six-figure investment.
Aberdeen-based Imes Group, which was co-founded by Melfort Campbell, expects to create a total of ten jobs at the new subsidiary, with six staff having already been hired.
Mr Campbell last year chaired the Scottish Government’s Independent Expert Commission on Oil & Gas and who is a former chair of CBI Scotland.
Other directors of the new division include Rod Buchan, who was appointed as executive chairman of Imes Group in April.
Experts in well intervention are being called upon to submit an abstract on the topic and share the latest developments with their peers.
The findings will be shared at the annual SPEICoTA European Well Intervention Conference which takes place at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre in November.
A range of topics will be covered over two days, with a focus on new technology and innovative solutions, subsea fields, mature fields and challenging environments.
An investigation is underway after a gas leak on a North Sea platform.
Production was temporarily shut down on the Beryl Alpha platform around 200 miles from Aberdeen after the incident earlier this month.
Operator Apache said the leak was suspected to have come from a flow transmitter on one of its wells.
Serica Energy said production at the Erskine field in the North Sea has been around 2,000boepd (barrels of oil equivalent per day) since it restarted two months ago.
The field, which is 150miles east of Aberdeen, had previously been shut down altogether from September last year to late May due to work on the Lomond platform.
The oil and gas explorer said four of the five wells at the asset are now in production and exceeding estimated potential.
Bristow Helicopters has launched a consultation with North Sea staff over job reductions.
The total number of workers facing potential job losses stands at 130 - including up to 66 pilots, in jobs
Petrofac has been issued an improvement notice after a gas leak went undetected on a North Sea platform.
The incident is understood to have happened in March on the Kittiwake platform, which is located 160km from Aberdeen.
It is understood a worker alerted staff to the leak 84 minutes after it had first begun and production was immediately halted.
MSIS has strengthened its board with the appointment of a new non-executive chairman.
John Forrest will join the team this month after more than 35 years in the upstream oil and gas industry.
He is currently chairman of PDG Helicopters and Task Fronterra and has provided board-level leadership to a number of companies.
As intense negotiations continue in Vienna with the world's superpowers (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US) Iran has still to conclude a deal that ensures absolute transparency on its nuclear plant activities that should prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons.
Statoil’s growing Aberdeen base will be safe from the firm’s latest round of job cuts, a spokesman confirmed.
The firm announced earlier today it would cut up to 2,000 posts, comprised of permanent and consultant positions, by the end of 2016.
The move is part of the Norwegian operator’s robust austerity measures.
The shortlist of contenders for honours at the Press and Journal’s inaugural celebration of 50 years of operations in the North Sea has been unveiled.
Thirteen companies and four individuals have emerged as potential winners of the newspaper’s first Gold Awards.
The recipient of the first hall of fame accolade will also be unveiled during the ceremony at the Marcliffe Hotel and Spa.
He made his fortune and reputation by recognising the massive potential of the North Sea, and by his own estimation did “incredibly well” during the oil and gas industry’s boom years.
Now Sir Ian Wood has pledged an incredible £4.5million to ensure that Aberdeen and the rest of the region has a bright future long after the lifeblood of the area’s economy runs dry.
The huge donation from the Wood Foundation to Robert Gordon University will be spent on turning the institute and the city into “world leaders” in the oil and gas industry for teaching, research and technology. It should also keep the sector anchored in the north-east long after operators have filled their last barrel.
A partnership initiative which was aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour by offshore workers travelling on trains to and from Europe’s oil capital has been successful.
BTP officers based in Aberdeen have been monitoring the conduct of passengers from the offshore industry arriving and departing from the city’s railway station and their behaviour on the trains they travelled on.
More than 350 train journeys were monitored between Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh as part of the initiative, which began last year.
Flexlife has been awarded a contract by Apache Corporation for work on the Aviat gas development and other operations in the Central North Sea.
The subsea project management and engineering support contract also includes work on the Ness/Nevis tie in and general subsea operations support.
Oil and gas companies are snapping up exhibition stands at this year’s Offshore Europe (OE) conference in Aberdeen as quickly as ever, despite the current downturn in the energy sector.
OE’s spiritual sister on this side of the Atlantic – ONS Norway – was cancelled and just last week BP said it would not exhibit at the biennial OE conference this September, with the low oil price citied as a factor in both decisions.
Concerns that OE could be a quiet affair this year appear to be unfounded, however.
Energy industry body Oil and Gas UK (OGUK) will host a hustings event featuring four parliamentary candidates in Aberdeen this week.
The hustings will be attended by chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, Labour’s Dame Anne Begg, Conservative candidate Alexander Burnett and former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond.
Conservative MEP Ian Duncan was in Aberdeen yesterday to highlight the support his party had provided to the North Sea oil and gas industry.
He said a £1.3billion package unveiled by Chancellor George Osborne last month had given the sector – blighted by a global fall in the oil price – a welcome boost.
Petroleum revenue tax has been reduced from 50% to 35% and the supplementary tax has dropped from 30% to 20%.
Speaking at the Maritime Museum, Mr Duncan said: “The tax breaks and support which George Osborne delivered are exactly what the oil and gas industry need to safeguard jobs and investment.
“That is what you get when you vote Scottish Conservative – jobs and growth as part of a long-term economic plan.
A north east firm is licking its lips at the prospect of growing demand from oil and gas firms after receiving a “number of inquiries” for ultrasound technology currently being used by Italian sports car maker Lamborghini.
Aberdeen-based RSL is a supplier of equipment designed to check the strength of materials without damaging them, a technique known in the trade as non-destructive testing (NDT).
Last year, the company agreed to become a UK reseller of DolphiCam, a type of camera that can assess impact damage on carbon-fibre-reinforced plastics by creating 2D and 3D images through the material.
Made by Norway’s DolphiTech, the camera is currently being used by Lamborghini and aerospace giant Boeing, and RSL thinks the technology can be applied in the subsea sector.
Aberdeen-based Axis Well Technology Ltd. has become one of the first organisations in the oil and gas sector to be recognised for its commitment to employing young people.
The organisation was presented with the Investors in Young People (IIYP) accreditation yesterday by Scottish Minister for Youth and Women's Employment, Annabelle Ewing MSP.
The IIYP scheme is supported by £1 million funding from the Scottish Government.
Parkmead Group said yesterday it had “significant” cash available to take advantage of lower oil prices and continue on the acquisition trail it has been on since 2011.
The Aberdeen-based oil and gas firm, led by north-east entrepreneur Tom Cross, has already pulled off six deals since a refocusing of the business four years ago. It was previously an investment and advisory firm.
Announcing first half results yesterday, Mr Cross said: “I am pleased to report significant progress in the period to December 31, 2014.
“Parkmead discovered a new onshore gas field at Diever West, in the Netherlands, which delivered excellent production flow rates, providing an additional near-term cash flow opportunity to the group.
