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Vol. 233 No. 4
Reservoir Exploration Technology ASA has received a contract award for an ocean bottom cable survey off the west coast of Ireland with the Ocean Pearl. The objective is to improve imaging and data bandwidth at the reservoir target, while also improving multiple elimination. The total survey duration is expected to be 96 days and the estimated contract value is $26.7 million. The survey is scheduled to commence in second quarter 2012 with planned completion in third quarter.
FMC Technologies has signed a four-year agreement with Petrobras for the supply of pre-salt subsea equipment. The total award would result in approximately $1.5 billion in revenue to FMC Technologies, if all of the subsea equipment included in the agreement is ordered. FMC’s total scope of supply could include delivery of up to 130 subsea trees, subsea multiplex controls, and related tools and equipment. The tree systems are for use offshore Brazil in water depths up to 8,200 ft. The equipment will be engineered at FMC’s South American Technology Center and manufactured at FMC’s subsea facility, both of which are in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The subsea trees will achieve 70% Brazilian local content, and deliveries are scheduled to commence in 2014.
Tenaris has purchased Cameron International’s plant, equipment and other assets related to its sucker rod business in Campina, Romania. The Campina rods mill has a capacity of 500,000 units/year and a workforce of around 60 people. The facility will continue its operation, and all its employees will now join Tenaris, which has a seamless tubes mill in Zalau, a steel mill in Calarasi and a service center in Ploiesti.
Seadrill has signed a contract with Saudi Aramco for employment of the jackup rig West Callisto offshore Saudi Arabia. The potential revenue for the three-year contract is about $164 million, plus a $20-million mobilization fee to cover various upgrades, dry tow vessel expenses and day rate in the mobilization period.
Baker Hughes Inc., through a subsidiary, has chartered a new pressure pumping vessel to provide offshore stimulation services to Maersk Oil in the North Sea. Upon completion, scheduled for late 2013, Blue Orca will become the eighth vessel in the Baker Hughes fleet. The vessel will be rated to 15,000 psi, 15,000 hydraulic hp, and will offer among the largest fluid and proppant carrying capacities in the world.
Siemens has received an order for the supply of two complete power packages for Statoil’s two new semisubmersible drilling units. The end customer is Songa Rig AS, the Norwegian branch of drilling contractor Songa Offshore SE. The rigs will start their assignments for operator Statoil in mid-water operations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf in 2014.
Caterpillar confirmed that the Cat 3500C Diesel Electric Propulsion generator sets have entered full production at the Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, manufacturing facility. Constructed in 1973, the 214,000-sq-m Piracicaba facility is Caterpillar’s second facility in Brazil and employs over 5,800 people. The facility was recently expanded to include assembly lines devoted solely to the production of generator sets.
Weatherford International Ltd. announced the launch of its Petroleum Consulting business unit, which will provide services to operators worldwide in the geoscience and engineering domain. The group will offer clients integrated formation evaluation and well engineering support and consultancy.
Maersk Supply Service has won three new major contracts with Petrobras. The total contract value is estimated at $295 million at current exchange rates. All three contracts will have a duration of four years, beginning December 2012, and include anchor handling tug supply vessels Maersk Leader, Maersk Lancer and Maersk Launcher. The vessels will be involved in ultra-deepwater anchor handling with both conventional and torpedo anchors.
HB Rentals is expanding its presence in Australia by introducing four new product lines to the area, including A60 temporary offshore accommodation and living quarters modules, ATEX Zone one pressurized A60 cabins, refrigerator containers and workshops, to support its growth strategy. The company has had a presence in Australia through an agency partner for the past six years and is now operating independently from its offices in Perth and operations base in Bibra Lake, Western Australia.
AVEVA has opened a new office in Seoul that will host sales, marketing, product support and administration functions for its customers in South Korea. In addition, AVEVA also operates the Marine Technology & Service Centre in Busan, South Korea, which provides engineering, research and development support.
Siemens Energy, along with its Chinese joint venture, SITHCO (Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Huludao Co.), will supply the first two large-size, pre-engineered, integrally-geared compressors for an air separation plant in China. The new air separation unit will supply gas for a nonferrous metal smelting plant in the city of Fangchenggang in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region in southern China. The plant will go online at the beginning of 2013.
InterMoor, an Acteon company, has been awarded a contract for the design and fabrication of the suction piles for the Williams Gulfstar FPS (Floating Production System) spar in the Gulf of Mexico. InterMoor will be responsible for the design and fabrication of 10 suction piles for the project. The Gulfstar spar platform will process 60,000 bopd and 200 MMcfgd.
WesternGeco announced the formation of a new division to sell and lease its UniQ point-receiver land acquisition and processing system to other industry players. The new division will make the system generally available to all service companies, as well as to energy companies who maintain their own crews. The UniQ platform is designed as an open-architecture system, with a proven capacity in excess of 200,000 channels and forms an auto-correcting, fault-tolerant layout that maximizes uptime, and therefore reduces overall survey duration.
Schlumberger has entered into an agreement with Altor Fund II to acquire SPT Group, a privately-owned software company specializing in dynamic modeling and consulting services for multiphase flow and reservoir engineering applications. SPT Group is headquartered in Norway and employs 280 people in 11 countries worldwide.
Saipem has been awarded new offshore and onshore drilling contracts worth about $300 million. In offshore drilling, Eni extended a contract chartering the semisubmersible drilling rig Scarabeo 7 for activities in Indonesian waters. Saipem also signed an extension of a contract with Petrobel for the charter of jackup rig Perro Negro 4 in Egypt. In onshore drilling, Saipem won contracts from several companies for the charter of five rigs. Three of the contracts are new, while two are extensions, in Saudi Arabia and Colombia, respectively.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire certain Barnett shale and Arkoma basin properties from WPX Energy for $306 million. The assets are comprised of 27,000 net acres in north-central Texas and eastern Oklahoma, and 66,000 net acres in the Arkoma. The Barnett shale properties have a current net production of approximately 67 MMcfgd.
Poland’s PKN Orlen will increase “several-fold” its planned investments in shale gas exploration and production. The company, which has planned to spend about $226 million over five years on unconventional gas exploration in Poland, is also seeking closer cooperation with gas monopoly Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA (PGNIG) on upstream projects. Poland’s shale gas and conventional reserves, combined, could cover 35-65 years of the country’s demand for natural gas, according to the Polish Geological Institute.
Aker Solutions has been awarded a contract by Enerserv W.L.L. to deliver 600 sets of surface wellheads and trees to the Awali oil field in Bahrain. This is the first surface wellhead contract won by Aker Solutions. The first delivery will be a total of 45 sets of surface wellheads and trees in June this year.
GE announced that the first 32-megawatt, MS 5002E gas turbine unit, fully assembled in St. Petersburg has successfully passed commissioning acceptance tests at REP Holding’s (REPH) Nevsky Zavod manufacturing facilities. Under a 2008 license agreement between REPH and GE Oil & Gas, REPH is assembling the “Ladoga 32” gas compressor units based on MS 5002E gas turbines in Russia.
Brazilian oil start-up HRT Participacoes em Petroleo SA said that it had started talks with potential partners to sell a stake in the company’s offshore exploration blocks in Namibia. HRT’s U.S. affiliate opened a data room in Houston after recently completing a three-dimensional seismic survey of the company’s holdings off the coast of the West African country, HRT said in a regulatory filing. HRT holds operating stakes in 10 blocks and minority shares in two others in the Walvis, Orange and Namibe basins.
South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries, the world’s second-largest shipbuilder by sales, sold its 6% stake in troubled Brazilian shipyard Estaleiro Atlantico Sul (EAS). Local construction firms Camargo Correa and Queiroz Galvao now hold 50%, each, of the shipbuilder, also known as EAS, according to the report.
Continental Resources has agreed to purchase the assets of Wheatland Oil of Enid, Oklahoma. Wheatland’s assets include 37,900 net acres in the North Dakota and Montana Bakken play, and interests in more than 1,000 gross wells, with net proved reserves of 17 MMboe as of year-end 2011 and production of 2,500 boed in December 2011.
Statoil ASA said that the partners in the giant Johan Sverdrup find in the Norwegian North Sea have signed a pre-unit agreement, naming Statoil working operator of the field. Statoil said the owners of the field will cooperate to develop and establish the best field solution for Johan Sverdrup, which is one of the largest discoveries, ever, on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. It covers an area jointly operated by Statoil and Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum AB.
BP announced an agreement to lease thousands of acres in northeastern Ohio for future oil and gas production in the Utica/Point Pleasant shale formation, which consists of a potentially significant liquids-rich gas source. BP signed an agreement to lease about 84,000 acres in Trumbull County, Ohio, with the Associated Landowners of the Ohio Valley (ALOV), a group representing area mineral owners. The Utica/Point Pleasant shale is at a depth of about 6,000 ft and is of similar thickness to the Marcellus, and has the potential to deliver higher liquid rates.
Keppel AmFELS has won a contract from Mexico’s Perforadora Central SA de CV to build a repeat jackup rig worth $205 million. Slated for delivery in first-quarter 2014, this latest high-specification unit will be based on the LeTourneau Super 116E design, with leg lengths of 511 ft and the capability to drill wells up to 30,000 ft at a water depth of 375 ft.
North Atlantic Drilling has entered into a turnkey construction contract with Jurong Shipyard in Singapore for the construction of a new harsh-environment semisubmersible drilling rig. The new rig will be of a Moss CS60 design, N-Class compliant and be fully winterized to meet the harsh and demanding weather conditions in the North Atlantic areas. Maximum water depth will be 10,000 ft with a maximum drilling depth of 40,000 ft. Further, the rig will be outfitted with both DP3 dynamic positioning systems and complete anchor handling capabilities.
Atlas Resource Partners has entered into an agreement with subsidiaries of Equal Energy to acquire a 50% interest in Equal’s approximately 14,500 net undeveloped acres in the core of the oil-and liquids-rich Mississippi Lime play in northwestern Oklahoma for approximately $18 million. The acreage position is located in Alfalfa, Garfield and Grant Counties, Oklahoma and is almost entirely held by Equal’s existing production from the Hunton formation.
UK independent Cairn Energy has agreed to buy private Norwegian oil firm Agora Oil & Gas as part of a strategy to balance its portfolio of assets. Cairn will pay $450 million for Agora, which holds several assets in the UK and Norwegian North Sea.
GeoPark Holdings Limited has completed its second acquisition in Colombia this year, with the purchase of Hupecol Cuerva for a total consideration of $75 million, cash. The assets acquired from Hupecol comprise the La Cuerva and Llanos 62 blocks (90,000 acres) in the Llanos basin in Colombia, both operated and owned with 100% working interests.
LINN Energy announced a joint venture agreement with an affiliate of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., whereby LINN will participate as a partner in the CO2-enhanced oil recovery development of the Salt Creek field, located in the Powder River basin of Wyoming. Anadarko assigned LINN 23% of its interest in the field in exchange for future funding of $400 million of Anadarko’s development costs. Anadarko has been utilizing CO2 to develop this field since 2004.
Optimization Petroleum Technologies (OPT) has named DeepDraft Energy as an agent to sell and implement OPT’s PEOffice software suite throughout Africa, with an exclusive focus on the African countries of Nigeria and Ghana.
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