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Vol. 231 No. 10 |
Technip has been awarded a contract worth about €23 million (US $30 million) by Statoil ASA, for the development of Snorre Field in the Norwegian North Sea. Technip will perform welding and installation of a 9-km rigid steel flowline to connect the Snorre A and B platforms. The contract also includes installation and tie-in of the flexible risers required to connect the flowline to the platforms. Work will be executed by Technip’s operating center in Oslo. The flowline will be welded at the group’s spoolbase in Orkanger, Norway. Riser installation is scheduled for the summer of 2011, while flowline installation, to be performed by the new pipelay vessel Apache II, will be done in the first half of 2012.
Casedhole Solutions, a provider of cased-hole wireline services, has relocated its headquarters to Houston from Weatherford, Oklahoma. Having been primarily a Mid-Continent service provider, the company has expanded into the Permian Basin, the Rocky Mountain area and the Marcellus Shale, and also plans to move into the Eagle Ford Shale.
Oceaneering International Inc., through its wholly owned subsidiary, Grayloc Products Canada Ltd., has acquired all the operating assets of SMX International Canada Inc. Located near Toronto, SMX is a manufacturer of metal-to-metal seal clamp connectors, check valves and universal ball joints. Oceaneering is a global oilfield provider of engineered services and products primarily to the offshore oil and gas industry, with a focus on deepwater applications.
Specialist oilfield production chemicals company Champion Technologies will provide production chemicals and chemical services to Wood Group for several of the firm’s North Sea assets. The work involves support operations on the Hummingbird, Voyageur and Triton FPSOs, the Beatrice and Jacky platforms as well as the Nigg offshore terminal. The contract is for three years initially, with two one-year options.
Conroe, Texas-based MS Energy Services has opened a Regional Service Center located in West Alexander, Pennsylvania. The new facility replaces the center in Washington, Pennsylvania, and provides a significant increase in physical space and service capabilities in a location that best serves the Appalachian oil and gas region and its large shale reserves. The services and equipment supported include directional and horizontal drilling, downhole surveying, measurement while drilling, downhole motors and steering tool services.
GL Noble Denton has opened a new office in Stavanger, Norway. GL Noble Denton has been involved with more than 100 mobile offshore production unit projects since the first-ever FPSO was built, including more than 15 newbuilds, 20 conversions and 65 studies.
Baker Hughes signed a three-year strategic alliance with Iraq’s South Oil Co. (SOC) to provide technical services to its wireline logging department in Basra, Iraq. Under the terms of the agreement, Baker Hughes will supply wireline technologies to SOC and other Iraqi oil and gas producers as well as help develop local Iraqi wireline logging capabilities. The agreement covers the provision of operations and technical support, HSE management and training programs, processes and procedures for SOC’s Iraqi engineers and technicians.
Safekick Americas LLC and Siemens Industry Inc. have entered into a strategic alliance agreement for the supply of ultrasonic flowmeters and other instrumentation to be used in an automated oil/gas well control system. The companies will work to develop a system that will automatically control the choke manifold of an oil or gas well by measuring the flow and pressure of the fluid on strategic points and for influx and loss detection.
Deep Down Inc. has teamed up with Core Industries to permanently locate a 3,200-tonne carousel system for umbilicals storage at Core’s deepwater port facility near Mobile, Alabama. Customers will be able to spool the umbilicals onto the installation vessel and simultaneously load out the vessel. Deep Down will also be able to perform full-scale systems integration testing and have installation equipment on site that supports the carousel. The carousel is currently under construction and will be ready in the fourth quarter of 2010.
Recent accidents at natural gas wells in Pennsylvania prompted the Department of Environmental Protection to arrange emergency response services with Cudd Well Control. The company is opening a new facility in Canton Township, which means an emergency response crew will be at most five hours from any natural gas well in Pennsylvania. By comparison, it took 16 hours for out-of-state crews to address a June 3 blowout because well operators had to wait for response crews to fly in from Texas. Cudd’s new operation will give Pennsylvania 16 specially trained well control responders and a senior well control responder.
Alcoa signed a contract with IHC Merwede, a provider of efficient dredging and mining vessels and equipment, to produce the first-ever aluminum alloy fallpipe for a dredging pipe system. Most fallpipes, which carry rocky material from the ship to the seabed, are made from either steel or plastic. Using aluminum reduces the weight of the fallpipe and allows dredging systems to operate at depths up to 2,000 m. Steel systems can operate in 500–600 m, and plastic versions are limited to 850 m.
CGGVeritas has launched the Oceanic Vega seismic vessel, the first of a new generation of Ulstein SX120 high-end vessels. It is the first of two X-Bow vessels commissioned by the company. The Oceanic Vega can deploy a maximum of 20 Sercel Sentinel solid streamers with Nautilus three-in-one integrated streamer control devices. The vessel offers the high bollard pull required for towing large spreads. The design diminishes slamming of the bow, reducing variations in speed and lowering turbulence. This significantly decreases noise, leading to the acquisition of clearer seismic data. A second X-Bow vessel, the Oceanic Sirius, is due for launch in the fall of 2011.
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