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Vol. 232 No. 2 |
Baker Hughes announced that its new drill bit manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia is fully operational and delivering polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits to the Saudi Arabian and Middle East markets. This modern drill bit plant consolidates all the manufacturing processes for PDC bits in Saudi Arabia. At full capacity, the facility, an integral part of the Baker Hughes super base in Dhahran, will employ about 80 people.
Aker Solutions completed the sale of the principal operations of its Process and Construction business area to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. The transaction does not include the US EPC Center in Houston, and the Union Construction business located in the US and Canada, which will both be part of the new Aker Contractors company. Aker Solutions has retained Aker Projects (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. until the regulatory clearances in China have been obtained. With these transactions, Aker Solutions’ P&C business area has been dissolved.
HB Rentals has completed a project to design, install and commission a laboratory complex onboard a drillship.The $1.1 million project was constructed in Shanghai, China, and South Korea and managed from the company’s Eastern Hemisphere headquarters in Aberdeen. The two-level, 32 ft 3 32 ft laboratory complex was designed and engineered to meet North Sea specifications with an internal setup designed for scientific testing equipment for subsea geological studies and analysis.
A Noble Corp. subsidiary has signed a contract with Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. (HHI) for the construction of two ultra-deepwater drillships. The order will increase the company’s number of floating drilling units to 26, 14 of which are dynamically positioned. The new drillships, not yet named, will be constructed on a fixed-price basis at HHI’s shipyard in Ulsan, Korea, with expected deliveries in the second and fourth quarters of 2013. Delivered cost of the new drillships is expected to be $605 million each, and includes the turnkey construction contract, equipment, project management and spares.
Marathon Oil Corp. will spin off Marathon’s downstream business, creating two independent energy companies. Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC), to be headquartered in Findlay, Ohio, is expected to be the fifth largest US refiner with a downstream portfolio of assets concentrated mainly in the Midwest, Gulf Coast and Southeast regions of the US. Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) will be a global upstream company focused on crude oil production and exploration. MRO will continue to be based in Houston.
Spectraseis, a specialist in low-frequency and broadband passive seismic for the upstream oil and gas industry, will relocate a number of its major operations to the US, while continuing to maintain an established presence in Switzerland. The company’s Houston office is being expanded to include operations, marketing and corporate activities, with the company’s CEO, CFO and head of marketing to be based there. A new technology center will also be opened in Denver, Colorado, for geoscience and information technology staff.
InterMoor has opened a new 24-acre facility in Morgan City, Louisiana. The ISO 9001:2008-approved site contains two fabrication buildings, both with capabilities to design and produce comprehensive offshore mooring systems, subsea foundations and equipment. This facility has more than double the capacity of InterMoor’s former yard in Amelia, Louisiana. The Morgan City site also has almost 1,300 ft of waterfront access.
ESG Solutions, a specialist in microseismic technology and services, has successfully completed the largest microseismic hydraulic fracture monitoring program conducted in Canada to date. The real-time microseismic mapping project for Nexen Inc. in the Horn River Basin in northeast British Columbia consisted of real-time monitoring for a total of 143 fracture stages in eight horizontal wells. Downhole geophone toolstrings were deployed in a variety of combinations in both the horizontal and vertical sections of nearby wells. The monitoring program made use of existing production wells adjacent to the treatment, removing the need for dedicated observation wells to be drilled onsite.
Greene’s Energy Group is offering third-party testing of blowout preventers and associated equipment for the purpose of certification in compliance with the new regulations issued by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE). Using digital testing technology to ensure accurate results, Greene’s can provide testing services for all types of BOPs and associated equipment. All results are recorded independently by a technician and a certified professional engineer and compared to ensure accuracy. Once results are verified, a comprehensive report is prepared to submit to BOEMRE for approval. These include all data required for certification, as well as basic images, charts and calculations.
Titan Specialties, a provider of perforating and cased-hole logging technology, has signed an agreement with Castell Obras y Servicios Integrales, S.A. de C.V. (Castell), to distribute Titan products in Mexico. Titan Specialties designs, manufactures and distributes perforating gun systems, shaped charges, tubing-conveyed perforating (TCP) systems and electronic well-logging instrumentation for the global oilfield services industry. BP Norge AS has received consent to use the mobile drilling facility Polar Pioneer on Skarv Field in the Norwegian Sea for drilling production wells in the period April 2011 to May 2013. Skarv is located about 22 mi southwest of Norne Field in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea. BP previously received consent to use the mobile facility Borgland Dolphin for drilling a total of 17 production wells on the deposits in the Skarv development. Polar Pioneer is taking over the work at Skarv from Borgland Dolphin. Skarv will be developed with a floating production, storage and offloading facility (FPSO), with subsea templates on the seabed. The field is expected to start producing in 2011.
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