India-focused Hardy Oil and Gas said yesterday it may have to change tack and turn its attention to other areas. Aberdeen-based Hardy is led by former KCA Deutag director Ian MacKenzie as chief executive. Alasdair Locke, the former executive chairman of Abbot Group, now KCA Deutag, is its chairman. The company’s portfolio includes exploration, appraisal and development assets.
Iran needs $100 billion to rebuild its gas industry and has met with European energy giants as an end to decades of international sanctions looms, according to the state-run company in charge of discussions. “We welcome and appreciate investment by companies; we welcome new technology,” Azizollah Ramazani, international affairs director at National Iranian Gas Co., said in an interview in Paris. “During the last 18 months we have had many discussions with foreign companies.” While commodity markets fixate on a return of Iranian oil, the importance of gas in the longer term was underlined Wednesday as BP Plc data showed the Islamic Republic held its position as the nation with the largest proven reserves of the fuel after snatching the crown from Russia in 2011.
Sentinel Marine has celebrated the latest addition to its growing fleet of offshore support vessels, naming the ship Cygnus Sentinel at a christening event in its home city of Aberdeen. It is the second of four emergency response and rescue vessels (ERRV) that Sentinel is taking delivery of as part of a £28million funding package from Clydesdale Bank and Germany’s Norddeutsche Landesbank. The 200ft-long Cygnus Sentinel is starting a five-year contract serving Gaz De France operations in the southern sector of the UK North Sea.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney has leapt to the defence of the SNP’s plan for full fiscal autonomy despite Scottish Parliament analysis which found that plummeting oil prices could lead to a £9.7 million cut in public spending. Labour has produced its own “oil and gas bulletin” while Holyrood awaits an official bulletin by the Scottish Government. SNP members cried that it was a “Mickey Mouse” report at First Minister’s Questions, but Labour’s deputy leader Kezia Dugdale said its findings have been confirmed by independent researchers at the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Spice).
Hess Corp is to sell half of its Bakken midstream assets for $2.68billion. The oil and gas producer will be signing over the assets to Global Infrastructure assets.
Tethys Petroleum is set to reduce its headcount as it looks to relocate staff members to its offices in London. The company said its offices in Guernsey would be closing and its finance team based there would be relocated. A two-week consultation period has now begun with staff based in Guernsey about their on-going employment with Tethys.
Technip has been awarded a contract for the decommissioning of the brownfield development and installation of subsea equipment in the Gulf of Mexico by Chevron. The company said the lump sum project will help support a floating production system located in the Mississippi Canyon. The work includes project management and engineering, decommissioning of existing equipment and pre-commissioning and testing.
Oil major Shell is said to be considering whether to pull the plug on its last exploration well in Ukraine. The move is being considered as the project has been on hold for almost a year, due to the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukranian forces.
Oilfield services company RMEC achieved its highest turnover in the last year after increasing its rental fleet and doubling its staff. The company achieved a turnover figure of £9.5million for 2014 up 5% from the year previously. It comes after RMEC received a £7.5million investment in April last year from Maven Capital Partners and over the last 12 months the company has invested more than £1million in its pressure control fleet.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner asserted their countries rights to the Falkland Islands as they traded diplomatic barbs across the Atlantic Ocean. Cameron said he had “robustly defended” Britain’s ownership of the islands at an EU-Latin America summit in Brussels, while Fernandez used a speech in Buenos Aires to accuse the British premier of being “almost rude” when he interrupted her foreign minister during a dinner in Brussels on Wednesday. “The prime minister robustly defended the Falklands and the islanders’ right to self-determination in response to the Argentine foreign minister raising the issue,” Cameron’s office said in an e-mailed statement.
Future Fibre Technologies (FFT) has won a $2.75million order for the sale of its products and services to protect pipelines in Mexico. The company said the win followed on from the successful commissioning of 160km of oil pipeline protection for the same customer last year.
CNOOC Limited has commenced production from the Dongfang1-1 gas field ahead of schedule. The Dongfang1-1 gas field is located in the Yinggehai Basin of Beibu Gulf in the South China Sea.
Statoil has awarded Baker Hughes a contract for production chemicals and services for the Mariner field. The company will design and supply production chemicals and services as part of an eight year contract anticipated to begin next month. The contract will also hold the possibility of an extension option for four years.
Oil and gas chiefs welcomed the prospect of further tax breaks yesterday after holding their first formal talks with the new UK Government. Ministers and industry leaders met at the Fiscal Forum, where Treasury minister Damian Hinds pledged to continue to support the sector during the downturn. As revealed yesterday, the Exchequer secretary confirmed at the summit that the government intended to expand the scope of the new investment allowance, and move to boost exploration and access to infrastructure.
Petrofac has signed a $900million engineering and procurement contract in Oman. The company said it had won the deal from PDO (Petroleum Development Oman), the country's top oil and gas producer.
Oil halted its advance after rising to a six-month high as investors weighed record Saudi production against signs the US supply glut is easing. Futures fell as much as 0.6 percent in New York following a 5.7 percent rally the past two days, the most in three weeks. Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest member, pumped 10.33 million barrels a day of crude in May, its data showed Wednesday. US output accelerated even as stockpiles declined for a sixth week, the Energy Information Administration reported.
An islands MP has pledged to probe the country’s electricity market after being chosen to take charge of one of the most influential committees at Westminster. It was announced yesterday that Angus MacNeil, who represents the Western Isles, will be the first SNP chairman of the energy and climate change select committee. His appointment raised hopes in the north and north-east last night that the powerful group would continue to put pressure on the UK Government over the high cost of power in the area.
AGR has developed a partnership with the University of Aberdeen to deliver their Petroleum Engineering Masters programme. The company is set to provide specialised support from their engineers and geo-scientists throughout the academic year. The support comes at a time when the oil and gas industry is actively looking at closer ways of collaborating and working together.
Two-thirds of North Sea oil and gas industry operators have been forced to cancel projects because of the recent fall in oil price, according to a survey. Confidence was found to be at an “all-time” low in the sector and activity levels were down in line with the declining oil price. An increase in decommissioning was described as “a bittersweet positive”, with more than 80% of contractors involved in that work seeing increases in their activity in the last 12 months.
Islamic State strengthened its hold in central Libya, taking territory near Libya’s largest oil terminal and repelling efforts by militias to halt its advance. The jihadist group had been tightening its grip on Sirte over recent months. It claimed on Tuesday to have finally succeeded in taking Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown, after overrunning a nearby power station. Islamic State already controls the desert town of Naufaliya, about 30 miles from Libya’s largest export terminal of Es Sider and neighboring Ras Lanuf, the third-largest. Controlling Sirte helps cement those positions on the west side of the so-called Sirte Basin, which is home to about 70 percent of the country’s crude reserves.
Engineering firm Weir Group said its trading was down 34% in the first five months of the year at its oil and gas division as energy firms cut spending in response to lower oil prices. The firm said the drop was in comparison to the same time last year. Weir Group, which has more than 15,000 employees across 70 countries, said it had been impacted by a slowdown in North America oil field activity.
Oil major BP said 2014 was a year of ‘tectonic’ shifts in global energy production and consumption. The company has just released its 2015 edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy which shows how significant changes in global energy production and consumption have had profound implications for prices, the global fuel mix and carbon dioxide emissions. Amongst some of the highlights was the continuing importance of the shale revolution, with the US overtaking Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer – surpassing Russia as the world’s largest producer.
Enegi Oil said its joint venture with ABTechnology - ABT Oil and Gas Ltd - has signed deals with two groups to join its marginal field delivery consortium. The company has now signed up AGR Well Management and Frames Group. The consortium was created to focus on the delivery of marginal field projects.
Lukoil’s profits for the first quarter of 2015 have fallen from more than $1billion to $690million compared with the previous year. The Russian oil producer said its first quarter revenues were also $23.2billion compared with $35.7billion in 2014.
InterOil has resumed drilling at a license in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea after drilling was suspended due to higher-than-expected pressure. The company had suspended work on the Wahoo-1 side-track exploration well in petroleum prospecting licence 474 in 2014.