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USA: Technip Wins FEED Contract for Mad Dog Phase 2 Project
Technip was awarded a front end engineering design (FEED) contract by BP Exploration & Production Inc. This contract covers the design of a Spar hull and mooring systems for the Mad Dog Phase 2 Project, located near Green Canyon Block 825 in the Gulf of Mexico.
This first award comes under the framework of the 10-year Spar platform master services agreement signed in 2011.
The Mad Dog Phase 2 Spar will be located near the first Mad Dog Spar delivered by Technip for BP in 2004, and installed on Green Canyon 782. Detailed engineering for the new Spar is scheduled to start during the second half of 2012.
Technip’s operating center in Houston, Texas, will execute the contract with support from the center in Pori, Finland.
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Britain reassures banks over Argentina’s Falklands threats
The British Government has told the Falklands and companies working there that it will defend the protectorate against Argentine aggression. Photo: Reuters
The Foreign Office has sought to reassure British and American banks threatened by the Argentine government over their involvement in the Falkland Islands oil industry.
By James Quinn 9:30PM BST 21 Apr 2012The Government, in a move designed to ease concern among the investment community about the Argentine legal threats, has written to some 15 banks and oil exploration companies operating in the region.
The move comes as Argentina faces international condemnation for its seizure of Repsol’s majority stake in YPF, Argentina’s largest oil company, last week.
In the new letter, the Foreign Office says it is “deeply sceptical” that Argentina would be able to enforce “any penalties” in courts outside its own borders. It adds that the government of the Falklands “is entitled to develop” oil and fishing industries in its own waters “without interference from Argentina.”
“The British Government has no doubt about our sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and surrounding maritime areas,” it adds.
News of the letter follows The Sunday Telegraph’s revelation that the Argentine government had written to banks involved in the Falkland oil industry threatening them with legal action. In writing to the banks concerned, including broker Oriel Securities and Royal Bank of Scotland, the Government has sought to not jeopardies the fledgling Falkland oil industry.
Related Articles
- Letter to banks over Argentina’s Falklands threats 21 Apr 2012
- Argentina’s Kirchner opens a new trade war 21 Apr 2012
- Falkland Oil and Gas shrugs off Argentine threats 13 Apr 2012
- Argentina’s Falklands oil threats: the letter to banks 31 Mar 2012
- Argentina includes Repsol gas unit in asset raid 19 Apr 2012
- EU parliament calls for Argentina sanctions 20 Apr 2012
Edison Investment Research, which has published research on the value of oil around the islands , slammed the attempts to silence it.
“Edison Investment Research firmly believes in the right for all financial institutions, publishers and in particular financial research houses such as ours to be able to exercise their right to provide independent analysis of all quoted companies wherever they are listed and wherever their operations may be carried out,” said Edison’s Fraser Thorne.
Related articles
- Foreign Office letter to banks over Argentina’s Falklands oil threats (telegraph.co.uk)
- Argentina threatens to sue banks helping Falklands oil explorers as trade war with Britain escalates (oyiabrown.wordpress.com)
- Venezuela attacks Britain’s stance over Falklands (independent.co.uk)
- Some Argentines Demand Return Of Falkland Islands (npr.org)
Norway: PSA Conducts Audit of Major Accident Risk in Connection with Light Well Intervention
In December 2011 and January 2012, the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) conducted an audit of Statoil Petroleum AS (Statoil) and Island Offshore Subsea AS (Island Offshore). The audit was aimed at management of major accident risk and the barrier management system in connection with light well intervention on Island Constructor.
Each year, more than 500 well interventions are carried out on the Norwegian shelf, and this number is expected to grow.
There is a high level of risk associated with work on live wells (major accident potential) and many interfaces (multiple alliance partners).
A survey of well intervention activities carried out during the period 2003 – 2008 concluded that there was a significant need for well interventions on subsea installations. Verification on one of the facilities that carries out light well intervention was implemented to investigate HSE challenges linked with this type of operation.
Island Offshore Management and Island Offshore Subsea have an alliance with FMC and Aker Well Service for operation of the Island Constructor which carries out light well intervention on subsea wells for Statoil.
Objective
* Evaluate the companies’ understanding, knowledge and expertise as relates to major accident risk and managing barriers, on the part of both company management and among the employees.
* Evaluate strategies and principles which are to form the basis for design, use and maintenance of barriers so that the barriers’ function will be safeguarded throughout the entire facility lifetime.
* Verify that performance requirements are established and implemented.
* Develop the PSA’s expertise in following up management’s work to reduce major accident risk, and clarify the need to develop a framework and supervision methods.
* Contribute to the PSA developing its own methods that will form the basis for more effective barrier supervision.
Result
The audit activity uncovered three nonconformities and four improvement items as regards Island Offshore.
The nonconformities related to deficient analysis of defined hazard and accident situations, layout of kill and stimulation lines, and deficient basis for and documentation of maintenance.
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DeepOcean Group Wins Trenching Job for COOEC in China
CTC Marine Projects, Ltd., a subsidiary of DeepOcean Group Holding AS, announced the award of a major trenching contract for COOEC on the Liwan 3-1 Project in China located 350 kilometres offshore Shenzhen, China.
CTC will be responsible for the trenching of approximately 174 kilometres of 30-inch pipeline from the Shallow Water Host Platform of the Liwan field development in water depth of 205 metres. For this workscope, CTC will use the MSV Volantis equipped with two ROVs and the world’s most powerful jet trenching ROV, the 2.1 Megawatt UT-1 Trencher.
Tony Stokes, Director of CTC’s Asia Pacific operations, states, “This project, along with the recently completed project with the Volantis and UT-1 in South Korea, shows the demand for CTC’s trenching technology in the thriving South East Asia region. We look forward to a successful campaign and are very pleased to cooperate with COOEC Subsea on such an epic project.”
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Canada: Subsea 7 Receives Terra Nova Field SURF Contract
Subsea 7 S.A. announced the award of a SURF contract valued at approximately $100 million from Suncor Energy on the Terra Nova Field, situated 350km south east of St John’s, Newfoundland, offshore Canada.
The contract scope includes the management, engineering and installation of nine 300 metre replacement risers and associated flowlines, jumpers and tie-ins.
Engineering and project management will commence immediately at Subsea 7’s St John’s office, with offshore operations due to commence in summer 2012 utilising Subsea 7’s world-class construction and diving vessels.
Phil Simons, Subsea 7’s Vice President Canada, Mediterranean & Russia said, “As a leading seabed-to-surface engineering, offshore construction and services company we are delighted to have won this prestigious contract which builds on our expertise and strong track record and further supports the development of our St. John’s office.”
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Germany: Siemens Postpones Launch of Subsea Power Grid
Siemens has unveiled the postponement of first subsea grid after revealing the purchase of Expro’s Connectors and Measurements division for $630 million, which will provide the final engineering for the project, the Reuters reported.
CEO of Siemens Oil and Gas Division, Adil Toubia, stated that the proto-type subsea power grid would be implemented at the end of 2013 and would be available to the market at the end of 2014.
Atle Stromme, Global Head of Subsea, said to Reuters that Expro’s C&M business would complete what Siemens needs to create the subsea power grid, a first ever for water depths of minimum 3,000 meters in the oil and gas processing business.
Reuters citied him as saying: “We now have in-house to develop the power grid.”
Siemens’ subsea power grid — which consists of transformers, converters, switchgears and adjustable speed drives — will supply the power to carry the oil and gas from the wellhead to a processing facility.
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Norway: Aker Solutions Secures Draupne FEED Contract
Aker Solutions has won a contract from Det norske oljeselskap to conduct a front-end, engineering and design (FEED) study for the Draupne field on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The study will be carried out by Aker Solutions’ newly established engineering office in London, and delivered to the license partners in Q4 2012. The contract value is undisclosed.
“I am very pleased that Det norske has decided to follow on the pre-FEED contract with the award of the topsides FEED contract for the Draupne development. The Draupne pre-FEED was the first contract awarded to the re-established Aker Solutions engineering entity in London. The new award confirms the successful build-up of our London office,” says Valborg Lundegaard, executive vice president and head of engineering in Aker Solutions.
London
Aker Solutions in 2011 decided to re-enter the London engineering market. Only a few months after opening the new office in Chiswick Park, the company is once again becoming a significant player in the London market. The engineering office now counts 90 employees, and Aker Solutions expects to be around 200 people by the end of 2012.
Draupne
The Draupne field is located to the west of Stavanger in the North Sea. The partners in the Draupne field have agreed with the partners in the Luno field on a coordinated development solution for the area. Draupne will be developed using a fixed platform with pre-processing, and the well stream will be transported from the Draupne platform to Luno for final processing and export to the markets.
Det norske is the operator and owner of 35 per cent of the Draupne license, together with Statoil (50 per cent) and Bayerngas Norge (15 per cent).
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Scientists Conduct Expedition of Atlantis Massif in North Atlantic Ocean
Scientists recently concluded an expedition aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution to learn more about Atlantis Massif, an undersea mountain, or seamount, that formed in a very different way than the majority of the seafloor in the oceans.
Unlike volcanic seamounts, which are made of the basalt that’s typical of most of the seafloor, Atlantis Massif includes rock types that are usually only found much deeper in the ocean crust, such as gabbro and peridotite.
The expedition, known as Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 340T, marks the first time the geophysical properties of gabbroic rocks have successfully been measured directly in place, rather than via remote techniques such as seismic surveying.
With these measurements in hand, scientists can now infer how these hard-to-reach rocks will “look” on future seismic surveys, making it easier to map out geophysical structures beneath the seafloor.
“This is exciting because it means that we may be able to use seismic survey data to infer the pattern of seawater circulation within the deeper crust,” says Donna Blackman of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., co-chief scientist for Expedition 340T.
“This would be a key step for quantifying rates and volumes of chemical, possibly biological, exchange between the oceans and the crust.”
Atlantis Massif sits on the flank of an oceanic spreading center that runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
As the tectonic plates separate, new crust is formed at the spreading center and a combination of stretching, faulting and the intrusion of magma from below shape the new seafloor.
Periods of reduced magma supplied from the underlying mantle result in the development of long-lived, large faults. Deep portions of the crust shift upward along these faults and may be exposed at the seafloor.
This process results in the formation of an oceanic core complex, or OCC, and is similar to the processes that formed the Basin and Range province of the Southwest United States.
“Recent discoveries from scientific ocean drilling have underlined that the process of creating new oceanic crust at seafloor spreading centers is complex,” says Jamie Allan, IODP program director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which co-funds the program.
“This work significantly adds to our ability to infer ocean crust structure and composition, including predicting how ocean crust has ‘aged’ in an area,” says Allan, “thereby giving us new tools for understanding ocean crust creation from Earth’s mantle.”
Atlantis Massif is a classic example of an oceanic core complex.
Because it’s relatively young–formed within the last million years–it’s an ideal place, scientists say, to study how the interplay between faulting, magmatism and seawater circulation influences the evolution of an OCC within the crust.
“Vast ocean basins cover most of the Earth, yet their crust is formed in a narrow zone,” says Blackman. “We’re studying that source zone to understand how rifting and magmatism work together to form a new plate.”
The JOIDES Resolution first visited Atlantis Massif about seven years ago; the science team on that expedition measured properties in gabbro.
But they focused on a shallower section, where pervasive seawater circulation had weathered the rock and changed its physical properties.
For the current expedition, the team did not drill new holes.
Rather, they lowered instruments into a deep existing hole drilled on a previous expedition, and made measurements from inside the hole.
The new measurements, at depths between 800 and 1,400 meters (about 2,600-4,600 feet) below the seafloor, include only a few narrow zones that had been altered by seawater circulation and/or by fault slip deformation.
The rest of the measurements focused on gabbroic rocks that have remained unaltered thus far.
The properties measured in the narrow zones of altered rock differ from the background properties measured in the unaltered gabbroic rocks.
The team found small differences in temperature next to two sub-seafloor faults, which suggests a slow percolation of seawater within those zones.
There were also significant differences in the speed at which seismic waves travel through the altered vs. unaltered zones.
“The expedition was a great opportunity to ground-truth our recent seismic analysis,” says Alistair Harding, also from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a co-chief scientist for Expedition 340T.
“It also provides vital baseline data for further seismic work aimed at understanding the formation and alteration of the massif.”
The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is an international research program dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of the Earth through drilling, coring and monitoring the subseafloor.
The JOIDES Resolution is a scientific research vessel managed by the U.S. Implementing Organization of IODP (USIO). Texas A&M University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership comprise the USIO.
Two lead agencies support the IODP: the U.S. National Science Foundation and Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Additional program support comes from the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, the Australia-New Zealand IODP Consortium, India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources.
Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 