Offshore articles from January 2004

Offshore archives from January 2004

Offshore turns 50.(Comment)(magazine)(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... Strange to think the offshore E&P business was up and running 50 years ago--healthy enough, in fact, to support the creation of this magazine. But it is true. The issue you're holding in your hands represents a major milestone. We plan to...

Americas.(exploration of oil wells)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Things are looking up in Atlantic Canada. EnCana, which put the Deep Panuke gas development on hold in February of last year, resumed exploration activity late last year with two wells. The Margaree and MarCoh wells have increased the...

Europe.(Global E&P)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum have acquired 90% interest in the Edison Gas North Adriatic LNG terminal project. The North Adriatic LNG terminal will be located offshore Italy's northern coast and is expected to support the country's...

Asia Pacific.(oil wells)
January 1, 2004... Business is booming in the Gulf of Thailand. Pogo Producing Co. had positive results from its Gulf of Thailand activities in 2003. The company drilled 10 wells in the Gulf, seven of which were development wells on the Benchamas D platform. ...

Middle East.(agreement of the oil and gas companies)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Teikoku Oil Co. Ltd. has executed a farm-out agreement covering the Khaligue El Zeit and South East July blocks in the west portion of the Gulf of Suez offshore Egypt. Teikoku will acquire a 30% participating interest in each block subject...

Mediterranean.(Global E&P)(Syrian Oil Co. reportedly signed a contract with Veritas DGC )(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... A new seismic agreement points to possible development in the eastern Mediterranean. Syrian Oil Co. reportedly signed a contract with Veritas DGC to gather seismic, geological, and geophysical data. Veritas will have the exclusive fight to...

India begins deepwater drilling program.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. kicked off its deepwater drilling campaign, Sagar Samriddhi, late last November. The multi-billion-dollar program, which provides for 47 deepwater exploration wells, was launched last August. The first...

Full rotation reduces drilling cost and risk.(Oilfield bulletin: technology focus on rotary steerable answers)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Full rotation of the entire drillstring at a uniform speed reduces sticking and facilitates the efficient flow of cuttings. There are no stationary components to create friction and no physical "anchor" to prevent weight transfer to the...

Precise steering, improved penetration with full-rotation system cuts rig time by 60 days for Gulf of Mexico operator.(Oilfield bulletin: technology focus on rotary steerable answers)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Full rotation of the entire drillstring at uniform speed provided the answer for exceptional ROP and efficiency that resulted in substantial drilling savings. A Gulf of Mexico operator drilled a well in 19 days using a PowerDrive 900 rotary...

Central Asia.(CAspian sea exploration)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... The Caspian Sea is heating up this winter. Wintershall AG is stepping up exploration activities in the Russian segment of the Caspian. The Volga delta has been pegged as an area of considerable potential. Two promising geological structures...

Africa.(oil wells of Angola)
January 1, 2004... Angola has seen activity of every sort recently. Late last year, Sonangol and BP announced the Marte oil discovery in ultra-deepwater block 31. This is the fourth exploration well BP has drilled in block 31 and the third successful discovery...

Pertamina moves forward with a new strategy.(the new chief executive officer Arrifin Nawawi plans to restructure the company)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Pertamina's new CEO has begun a series of steps intended to support the company's new limited liability company (LLC) status, granted in September 2003. Arrifi Nawawi, the newly appointed CEO, said his priorities in the next few months...

Hydro/Marathon in joint talks.(Offshore Europe)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Norsk Hydro is looking to submit a development plan by late this year for its 120-MMbbl Klegg oilfield, discovered last September in North Sea license PL036. According to Exploration and Development VP Lars Christian Alsvik, it should be...

Norway opens mature sectors to prospectors.(Offshore Europe)
January 1, 2004... Eight companies, including four relative newcomers to Norway, have been granted operatorships in the country's latest licensing round. A total of 19 production licenses have been issued, covering 39 blocks and part-blocks in the North Sea and...

Sanction at last for Buzzard.(Offshore Europe)(Buzzard Oil)
January 1, 2004... Britain's Department of Trade and Industry has approved the country's largest new field development since BP's Schiehallion in 1995. Buzzard, discovered in 2001 in Upper Jurassic sandstones in the Outer Moray Firth, has estimated recoverable...

Pipe recovery group set up.(Gulf of Mexico)
January 1, 2004... Wood Group Logging Services, a unit of the Wood Group, has formed a new group to respond to an old call for help. The company, which has performed pipe recovery for years, including pipe from wells with deviations greater than 70[degrees]...

Competition remains, despite mergers.(Gulf of Mexico)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Recent mega-mergers do not appear to have decreased the competitiveness of the Gulf of Mexico's lease sales on the outer continental shelf (OCS), according to a study released by the US Minerals Management Service. Following a period of...

Shenzi-2 appraisal confirms deepwater find.(Gulf of Mexico)
January 1, 2004... BHP Billiton said its first appraisal well on the Shenzi field, discovered last year in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, encountered 500 ft of net oil pay in a 1,250-ft gross hydrocarbon column of lower Miocene reservoir sandstones. BHP...

Matterhorn goes onstream.(Gulf of Mexico)(drilling platform)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Total has brought onstream its deepwater Matterhorn field on Mississippi Canyon block 243 in the Gulf of Mexico. Total developed the field, discovered in 1999, with a TLP that has 33,000 b/d and 55 MMcf/d of throughput capacity. Production...

Anglo-Eastern Group adds new niche market.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... The Anglo-Eastern Group has added another niche market. Anglo-Eastern Crew Management has opened an office in Singapore and is providing specialized crew management for offshore vessel operators of drillships, cable layers, rigs, FPSOs, dive...

BG buys new LNG carriers.(Vessels, Rigs, Upgrades)(liquefied natural gas)(BG Group)
January 1, 2004... Continued investment in LNG carriers is a bellwether that shows the direction the global gas business is taking. BG Group has entered into an agreement with Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. to purchase three newbuild LNG carriers. The...

New LNG carriers for Qatar.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... RasLaffan Liquefied Natural Gas Co. Ltd. (ID (RasGas II) has exercised a time charter agreement for two 145,000-cu-m LNG vessels to be built at Samsung Heavy Industries for delivery in 2005. A joint venture company comprising a consortium...

AMFELS busy with modification, newbuilds.(Vessels, Rigs, Upgrades)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd.'s AMFELS Inc. has landed a $73-million firm-fixed-price contract from The Boeing Co. for platform modification. The SBX Platform is a self-propelled semi-submersible modified oil-drilling platform developed...

Two diamond semis out of commission.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... At the end of last year, Diamond Offshore retired two second-generation semisubmerisibles, the Ocean Century and Ocean Prospector. The rigs had been cold-stacked in the Gulf of Mexico since 1998. According to Larry Dickerson, Diamond's...

Seamap installs system for Veritas.(GunLink 2000 hydrophone )(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Seamap has installed and commissioned a new GunLink 2000 hydrophone acquisition and gun control system on the SR/V Veritas Vantage for Veritas DGC. The GunLink 2000 is the first phase of Seamap's new generation hydro-phone acquisition and...

Northern canyon.(maintenance vessel)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Canyon Offshore's Northern Canyon, delivered in June 2002, arrived in Galveston, Texas, late last year. The vessel went to work providing ROV support on Kerr-McGee's Gunnison project in the Gulf of Mexico. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Rigless intervention comes to North Sea.(Oil well intervention equipment)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Statoil has successfully applied FMC's new Riserless Light Well Intervention technology on the Norwegian continental shelf. FMC Kongsberg Subsea developed RLWI in cooperation with Statoil and Prosafe and tested it on Prosafe MSV Regalia....

Sea trials for Alive.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Following a series of tank and shallow water tests last summer, sea trials of the Autonomous Light Intervention Vehicle (Alive) were performed offshore the French Riviera. Alive docked on a subsea structure (ROV panel) autonomously. Once...

GE provides PT sensors on Dalia.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... GE Druck has received an order from Kvaerner Oilfield Products to supply customized PTTX400 Series Subsea Wellhead Transmitters. These will be installed on Aker Kvaerner control systems in support of Total's Dalia project, 100 mi offshore...

Shell launches Bullwinkle--world's tallest pile-supported, fixed steel platform at 1,365 ft.(May 1998)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... In the summer of 1988, the Bullwinkle jacket made its three-day journey from Gulf Marine Fabricators' yard in Corpus Christi, Texas, to Green Canyon block 65 in the Gulf of Mexico. Edging out the Sears Tower in Chicago for world's tallest...

Cement-through completion.(completion system for cemented monobore wells)
January 1, 2004... Baker Oil Tools has introduced what it describes as the first completion system developed specifically for cemented monobore wells--the Mono-Trip CemenThru. The first runs of the new system are scheduled for this fall in the Gulf of Thailand....

Formation pressure tester.(Drilling & Production)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Halliburton Energy Services' Sperry-Sun product service line has announced the global commercialization of the GeoTap logging-while-drilling (LWD) formation pressure tester. The LWD sensor provides operators with wireline-quality, reservoir...

Electric intelligent completion.(Drilling & Production)
January 1, 2004... The world's first deepwater subsea all-electric intelligent completion system has been installed for Petrobras in the Marlim Sul field in the Campos Basin of Brazil. Baker Oil Tools installed the all-electric InCharge system from a DP drilling...

Catastrophic events.(Geosciences)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... One danger for explorationists is staying so close to identifying short-cycle processes that long-cycle events are missed. Sometimes the explorer must consider intermittent, singular, or catastrophic events to understand local rock history....

Understanding cyclicity.(Geosciences)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... How does exploration work? What is the "secret" to locating the buried hydrocarbon treasure that makes the world's economies run? The short answer is cyclicity, consistently repeated processes that allow predictive leaps of logic. "The...

Punctuated cycles.(Petroleum exploration)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Cycle interpretation was greatly advanced with the development of seismic sequence stratigraphy by Exxon researchers in the 1970s. It allowed correlations in one marine basin to be extended into other marine basins, even across oceans....

Indian survey.(Exploration)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Compagnie Generale de Geophysique (CGG) Marine was awarded a 3D survey by ONGC in India's eastern offshore. The survey is located in the Krishna-Godavari, Mahanadi, and Cauvery basins in water depths ranging from 50 m to over 1,000 m. The...

Seismic while drilling.(Technology)(seismicVISION)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Schlumberger Oilfield Services has released seismicVISION, a logging-while-drilling system that acquires and transmits seismic data in real time without interfering with normal drilling operations. The system delivers borehole-seismic...

Open-source system.(De Groot-Bril's product introduction)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... De Groot-Bril (dGB) has released its d-Tect interpretation software as an open source product. The software is used for seismic attribute processing, filtering, and pattern recognition. Under a new licensing agreement, OpendeTect source code...

The history of offshore: developing the E&P infrastructure.
January 1, 2004... It was almost incidental to the worldwide petroleum industry that drillers took exploration and production from dry land out into open water. Just after World War II, oil companies operating in the United States were seeking fresh drilling...

Forecasters expect more caution in GoM drifting: rig utilization to inch upward.(Gulf Of Mexico)
January 1, 2004... In 2004, operators will be more cautious in what they drill, and they will work to build up reserves in areas where production is already onstream, analysts say. Pete Joslin, manager of petroleum services for the Americas at Deloitte &...

2003 yields 17 deepwater GoM discoveries: operators plan development, more drilling.(Gulf Of Mexico)
January 1, 2004... Independents and supermajors drilled, and the hydrocarbons showed up--in 17 discoveries in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. From January to November, operators posted finds with Arias, Chinook, Constitution, Ewing Bank 1006, Goose, Harrier,...

Gulf of Mexico 'trouble time' creates major drilling expenses; use of cost-effective technologies needed.(Gulf Of Mexico)
January 1, 2004... Over the past 10 years, 1993 through 2002, "trouble time" caused by hole problem incidents has consumed 24-27% of Guff of Mexico operator's drilling budgets. This proportion brackets the general "authorization for expenditure fudge factor" of...

Turnkey drilling model bucks decline trend: an 'insurance policy for drilling budgets'.(Gulf Of Mexico)
January 1, 2004... Rig counts in the Gulf of Mexico may have dipped from last year's rates, but turnkey operator Applied Drilling Technology Inc. isn't reflecting that drop. Busy when the rig market is up, and less so when it's down, "We do ride the rig tide...

Online bidding solves some problems as it creates others.(Management & Economics)
January 1, 2004... The goals seem sound--increase transparency, level the playing field, make bidding on projects more competitive--but the trend toward online bidding has some contractors worried that operators don't see the whole picture. Online bidding...

Ekofisk test proves seaflooor JPG seismic concept; links to land demonstrate real-time potential.(Geology & Geophysics)
January 1, 2004... In the fall of 2002, ConocoPhillips installed and tested a new seafloor seismic technology over the Ekofisk field using a prototype system developed by Input/ Output. The objective was to verify that reliable full wave field seismic data could...

Regional salt provinces evaluation aids future exploration; Northern Gulf of Mexico deep prospects sought.
January 1, 2004... PART 1: This is part one of a two-part series on salt tectonic style classification as an aid to exploration. Exploration for new discoveries in the northern Gulf of Mexico is now dominantly focused on deep targets between 25,000 and...

UK's first abandoned oilfield restored to active service: re-development based on drilling/production jackup.
January 1, 2004... Production has resumed at Ardmore in the central North Sea, 11 years after the taps were switched off. This is the first attempted resurrection of an abandoned field in the UK sector, using an entirely different production system. If...

Deepwater isolation, shallow-water flow hazards test cement in Marco Polo: new slurries help reduce the known risks.
January 1, 2004... Cement integrity achieved in the Gulf of Mexico Marco Polo development in Green Canyon block 608 is putting innovative slurry systems on the map of sought-after technologies for deep-water plays. These new slurries help reduce the known risk of...

Storm clouds gather.
January 1, 2004... Last year, I commented on the "Impact of Capex Migration on Oil & Gas Services." The comments are still relevant. The "frontiers," as we call them, are the same--large, complex offshore projects in deepwater or isolated areas, the vast...

Paragon: working for your success.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Energy Challenge Us. www.mbakercorp.com Houston, TX 800-235-5290 Lafayette, LA 800-737-0430 A History of Excellence A Future of Innovation * Deepwater Operational Readiness * Performance Based Operations * Skilled...

2004 survey of Offshore pipeline installation & burial contractors & vessels.
January 1, 2004... OFFSHORE US GULF OF MEXICO--STATE & FEDERAL WATERS, BEACH TO ULTRA-DEEPWATER JANUARY 2004 OFFSHORE MAGAZINE 1700 West Loop South, Suite 1000; Houston, TX 77027 Tel: 713-621-9720; Fax 713-963-6296 www.offshore-mag.com Supplement to...