Transocean has won a contract for its GSF Constellation I drillship in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The win comes after the company said yesterday it had agreed with oil major Shell, to delay two drillships both by 12 months. The dayrate for the drillship will be $104,000.
Serica Energy has reached an agreement with BG International and SSE to transfer equity in the Columbus field in the North Sea.
Wood Group PSN (WGPSN) is in consultation with its staff over a move to three on, three off rotation on Shell assets in the North Sea. The company said it was working with employees who would be affected by the changes as well as the oil major and unions. Earlier this year Shell revealed it would be moving to a three on, three off shift pattern in January next year.
A mobile app designed to give oil workers access to training and certification records has been download by half the North Sea offshore workforce since its launch last year, according to training body Opito.
Stork said the UK market “continues to be tough” amid the challenging oil price decline as it revealed its third quarter results. The company said its order book was down from €1.2billion to just over €1billion for the quarter, impacted by deferrals of contract extensions as well as negative exchange rates. Meanwhile revenue has increased by 5.2% while organic growth has also increased by 4.6%.
Proserv has won a contract worth £1.6million to provide topside control equipment on Statoil’s Johan Sverdrup drilling platform. The company said the agreement will see it supplying Aibel with an hydraulic power unit (HPU) and three chemical injection plants to be used on the field. Proserv said it plans to make most of its international network with staff in Norway working in collaboration with their Dubai colleagues.
Centrica Energy is drilling a new well at the York field in the North Sea that could tap into an additional 20billion cubic feet of gas. The company said work has begun to unlock the new gas reserves and boost production following £80million worth of investment. The York gas field, 20 miles off the Lincolnshire coast, already produces enough gas every day to heat all the homes in Hull and both north and north east Lincolnshire combined.
North Sea helicopter operator CHC is leading the way with innovative new technology offshore. The company has replaced paper documents to create an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB). It combines pilot logs, flight procedures and other documents in the field onto one tablet device which pilots can use when flying to different North Sea destinations.
Fracking could have a detrimental impact on the North-east oil and gas industry, an Aberdeen academic has warned. The onshore fracking process has led to huge public protests over the potential environmental impact of blasting gas from shale rock using water and sand, including a major demonstration at Barton Moss in Greater Manchester. Professor of petroleum accounting at Robert Gordon University, Alex Russell, has said fracking could have a hugely detrimental impact on Aberdeen’s position as Europe’s oil and gas capital.
A busy Offshore Europe event delivered “staggering” occupancy levels for Aberdeen hotels, but failed to reverse an ongoing decline due to the oil price crash, new figures show. In what is the first report on the Granite city’s hotel trade for the key month of September 2015, LJ Research found that room occupancy fell 12.8% despite reaching 99% capacity halfway through oil week. The report also found that hotel room yields in the month were down 13.8% on September 2013 – the last time Aberdeen hosted the biennial oil and gas event.
The UK treasury made a multimillion-pound loss on North Sea oil and gas for the first time in 40 years. Thanks to the plummeting oil price, dipping government revenues were outweighed by repayments to producers in the first six months of this financial year. It is thought to be the first loss recorded over a six-month period since the industry was established. Scottish energy minister Fergus Ewing insisted that oil and gas could proposer for decades in the North Sea – but opposition parties suggested the revelation reflected the benefits of being part of the UK.
The "reality" of a potential strike in the North Sea industry is now hitting companies, according to a top industrial relations expert.
The UK Government made a loss from North Sea oil and gas in the first six months of this year, according to reports. According to The Herald, the revenues were more than cancelled out by repayments to producers between the months of April and September. While a total of £248million was collected from the industry in both corporation tax and petroleum revenue tax (PRT) around£287million was handed out in rebates following the downturn.
A company set up by Wood Group last year to perform personnel services to external businesses will now be brought in-house once again. Wood Group said the move to reel in its Altablue recruitment and payroll business was to reflect the “changing need” for resourcing service provisions in the current climate. The 100% owned Wood Group firm was set up in June last year and registered in Jersey.
North Sea energy firms are continuing efforts to break into new, global markets as the collapse in oil prices takes its toll on the supply chain. Firms like Aberdeen-based Reftrade UK, which specialises in providing refrigeration containers in harsh environments, is looking to the pharmaceuticals industry. Meanwhile, Enermech, a mechanical engineering group which has its headquarters in Aberdeen, has invested £250,000 to offer a mobile valves testing service in South Africa which takes in sectors as diverse as brewing and the pulp and paper industry.
Aker Solutions has recruited an upstream manager from oil major BP to lead its maintenance, modifications and operations (MMO) business in the UK. Craig Wiggins, who will be based in Aberdeen, will have responsibility for the company's brownfield engineering capability in the region. His most recent role had seen him focussed on delivering efficiencies within BP's global upstream business.
The Buzzard oilfield in the North Sea has begun ramping up production once again after a four-day outage. The operator Nexen said the field, which is the largest contributor to the Forties crude oil stream, was coming back online after it was shut down last week. Buzzard produces about 186,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Engineering is in Ollie Folayan’s DNA. His father considers himself to be number 23 in a long line of engineers. It meant a career in engineering was a natural choice for Mr Folayan, who loved tinkering with gadgets as a youngster. Mr Folayan, who is now the Aberdeen-based chairman of the Association for Black and minority ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK), said: “When I was younger I always tended to break everything electronic. I tried to figure out how it worked. It could be as simple as trying to get the aerial to work on the TV to trying to understand cars.” Mr Folayan, 41, moved into a full-time engineering job at Babcock after earning his doctorate in fuels and combustion at Leeds University.
Are you in this to be liked? Have you asked yourself how well you managed the cost reduction exercises in your business this year? This recession has cut deeper and lasted longer than most of us ever expected, but that doesn’t mean we have to wait for it to be over to be liked. Most leaders in this market have been through recession and subsequent headcount reductions several times. Many will admit that managing redundancies is the toughest thing that they have had to do in their careers.
Plans for the next phase of a major expansion of a north port will go on show to the public in December. The Port of Cromarty Firth hope to attract more huge cruise ships and jobs to the area with the expansion. It would be the fourth phase of the multi-million pound expansion plans at the Invergordon port, with the proposals including reclaiming an additional 17 acres of land. The plans are still in the process of being firmed up and public opinion is to be gathered in advance of the two public shows in December.
Industry trade body Oil and Gas UK has published the second issue of its guidelines on the qualification of materials for the abandonment of wells.
NSRI (National Subsea Research Initiative) is leading computer industry-style hackathons that it hopes will lead to ideas that can help unlock up to 1.5 billion barrels of oil from the North Sea.
Enegi Oil, the independent oil and gas company, has appointed Dr Nigel Burton as its new chief executive.
A giant of the oil industry has arrived in the Cromarty Firth to take shelter for the winter. At 35,500 tonnes, the West Phoenix rig is the largest by gross tonnage ever to berth in the firth. It will shelter in the deep waters over the winter before embarking on a new contract in March off the west coast of Shetland.
Statoil’s new managing director of production in the UK has taken over her new position with the Norwegian operator. Tove Stuhr Sjoblom will head up the firm’s offices in Aberdeen with responsibility for upstream development and production activities in the UK and Ireland. Sjoblom replaces Gunnar Breivik who will now head up Statoil’s corporate investigation unit.