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Vol. 224 No. 6 |
The American Petroleum Institute’s electronic business standards group, the Petroleum Industry Data Exchange, and the Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium, Inc. (POSC) have agreed to work together to develop and support technology-neutral electronic business and data standards for the oil and gas industry. A team of representatives from each organization will establish the scope of projects related to this agreement. Both organizations will coordinate, cooperate and share activities for the benefit of their members and industry at large. The two groups have been collaborating in the oil and gas industry for more than 10 years. Each organization has had a distinct area of emphasis and produced largely separate standards and related materials. The emphasis for POSC has been data definition and use in the technical disciplines of exploration and production, while PIDX has focused on inter-company electronic trade transaction formats for the upstream, midstream and downstream industry segments.
The US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) selected Exxon Mobil Corp. to receive its 2002 National Safety Award for Excellence (SAFE). ExxonMobil received the National SAFE award in the high-activity category for the Outer Continental Shelf in recognition of the company’s safety record and operational performance at its offshore facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California. The award, established in 1983, honors companies that achieve outstanding safety and environmental results, and that demonstrate notable efforts to train and motivate their employees to conduct offshore operations in a highly responsible manner. The SAFE award also highlights to the public those companies that conduct offshore oil and gas activities safely and in a pollution-free manner.
Bill Barret Corp. a newly formed oil and gas exploration company based in Denver, Colorado, has announced it successfully closed financing on approximately $107.5 million from management and investors. The company also announced it has acquired several proven producing natural gas properties in the Wind River basin of Wyoming for $73 million. The new corporation will focus on finding and developing natural gas in the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S.
Dockwise Shipping B.V. has for the first time installed a topside onto a pre-installed jacket by using a semisubmersible heavy transport vessel. The Might Servant 3 successfully installed the TotalFinaElf AMP 1 fully integrated topside onto a jacket in the Amenam Kpono field, offshore Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The AMP 1 weighs 11,200t, and measures 75 by 70.
Aberden, Scotland-based OPS (North Sea) Ltd, a provider of specialist personnel to the international oil and gas industry, announced it is changing its name to OPS Group Ltd. The change reflects OPS’s expansion into other disciplines and areas of the world.
Weatherford International Ltd. has announced that it has successfully installed four compliantly expanded Solid Expandable MetalSkin casing repair systems for Imperial Oil Resources at its Cold Lake field in Alberta, Canada. The installation returned the four wells to service. MetalSkin is a metal-to-metal expandable casing system designed to solve problems that occur when reservoir and fluid production conditions have changed, or when the casing has been worn, corroded or damaged. At Cold Lake, the system was applied using the compliant rotary expansion system to repair casing leaks. This technique forms the expandable casing to the casing being repaired, accommodating irregularities in the latter, providing metal-to-metal contact around the entire circumference of the casing and giving a tight seal.
Devon Energy Corp. and Ocean Energy, Inc. announced the completion of their merger, making Devon the largest US-based independent producer of oil and gas. With an enterprise value of over $20 billion, Devon has proven oil and gas reserves of approximately 2.2 billion boe and production of 653,000 boe per day.
The oil service company UWG Group received a major accolade for the innovation and business success of its Suspended Well Abandonment Tool (SWAT) by winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise. The award recognizes SWAT’s innovation, resulting in substantially improved business performance and commercial success. Since its inception in 1996, the tool has significantly reduced project costs compared to traditional methods. More than 60 wells have been abandoned so far using SWAT. Developed in response to the growing need to abandon redundant wells in a safe, reliable, economic and environmentally sensitive manner, SWAT was specifically designed to enable the abandonment of previously suspended subsea wells from low-cost ROV support vessels.
Wood Group Pressure Control has been awarded contracts totaling $10 million to supply Saudi Aramco with xmas trees for Khuff gas production in Saudi Arabia. The Aberdeen-based company is manufacturing an order of trees for Saudi Aramco that was placed late in 2002. Work is taking place at Wood Group’s new purpose-built manufacturing facility in Peterhead, Scotland.
WellDynamics Inc. completed installation of all six subsea SmartWell completions for TotalFinaElf E&P USA and Marathon Oil Company’s Gulf of Mexico deepwater projects. The wells set a Gulf of Mexico record with Marathon’s Camden Hill project being developed at a water depth of 7,209 ft, followed by TotalFinaElf’s Aconcagua development at 7,096 ft. Field developments were operated remotely from Canyon Station, without the need for intervention by deepwater drillships or semi-submersibles. The SmartWell systems incorporate multiple gauge systems to permit remote data recovery of tubing, and sandface temperatures and pressures. Each completions comprises two control sleeves and a gauge package, with the lower sleeve shrouded to permit separation of the upper and lower pays, providing selective control of each zone. The wells were completed with stacked gravel packs and were successfully flow-tested after installation.
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