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Vol. 231 No. 1 |
Scorpion Offshore announced that its jackup rig, Offshore Courageous, has been named the Shell International E&P Jackup Rig of the Year. The rig, of the LeTourneau Super 116 class, was the company’s first jackup and has been working since mid-2007 for various clients. It is unusual for a rig to win the award in its first year of operation. Offshore Courageous started operations for Shell Malaysia at the beginning of 2009, and has almost 300 days without recordable injuries while drilling and completing wells on time and within budget. The rig has been drilling offshore Malaysia for a subsidiary of Shell under a three-year term contract.
FloaTEC, LLC—the deepwater joint venture of Keppel FELS and J. Ray McDermott—will provide front-end engineering and design (FEED) for the hull, mooring and risers for Chevron USA’s proposed Big Foot development facility. Big Foot Field is located in the Walker Ridge Block 29 of the Gulf of Mexico and is owned by Chevron USA (operator), Statoil Gulf of Mexico LLC and Marubeni Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. The facility will be installed in 5,187 ft of water about 200 mi from New Orleans and 35 mi south of Chevron’s producing Tahiti Field. The goal is to develop Big Foot with a dry-tree floating drilling and production facility. The hull would be an extended tension leg platform (ETLP), with associated foundation piles, tendon mooring systems and top tensioned risers.
InterMoor Inc., an Acteon company, has broken ground on its new facility in Morgan City, Louisiana. The company will move its current operations in Amelia, Louisiana, to the new facility, which will be developed on 24 acres and will house administrative, maintenance, operations and fabrication employees. The facility will feature more than 30,000 sq ft of fabrication space, including a computer numerically controlled (CNC) cutting machine, mooring equipment and storage capabilities; a 12,000-sq-ft multi-purpose building for administrative and operations employees; a wire doping area to inspect, protect and prepare wire rope for offshore jobs; a 20,000-sq-ft blasting and painting facility; and a 300-ton crane to enhance docking services.
Transocean’s newbuild ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig Development Driller III has commenced operations in the US Gulf of Mexico for a subsidiary of BP under a seven-year drilling contract. The dynamically positioned semi is one of 23 ultra-deepwater floaters in the Transocean fleet. The rig features advanced offshore drilling technology, including a motion-compensated winch capable of deploying subsea assemblies to the seabed, a high-pressure mud-pump system, a variable deckload of 7,000 tonnes and dual-activity drilling technology, allowing for parallel drilling operations. The rig is equipped for drilling in water depths up to 7,500 ft, upgradeable to 10,000 ft, and equipped for drilling wells up to 35,000 ft TD, upgradeable to 37,500 ft.
Aker Solutions will provide support services for Reliance Industries’ MA-D6 and KG-D6 field developments, located in Bay of Bengal, India. The company will provide inspection, testing and maintenance of subsea equipment and tools for a period of three years. Aker Solutions has previously delivered subsea production systems to Reliance’s fast-track projects in the KG-D6 Block.
Well Control School (WCS), a division of RPC Inc., has received certification under the ISO 9001:2008 standard for Quality Management Systems for excellence in providing drilling industry training products and services. WCS has been providing training to the oil and gas industry for over 25 years.
The Nabors Well Services Elk City, Oklahoma, facility has been approved by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) at the Star level. Achieving the VPP approval requires a rigorous audit of operations, practices, safety records and employee interviews. The facility is the only one in Oklahoma providing oil and gas operations support to earn VPP status.
Hyperdynamics Corp. has signed a binding sale and purchase agreement with Aberdeen-based Dana Petroleum plc under which Dana has agreed to acquire, through its subsidiary Dana Petroleum (E&P) Ltd., a 23% participating interest in Hyperdynamics’ oil and gas concession offshore the Republic of Guinea.
Logan Holdings Inc. and Destiny Resource Services Corp., a seismic services provider, have entered into a merger agreement whereby Destiny will be merged with Logan, but will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary thereof. The newly formed service company will be led by Logan’s President and CEO Gerald Hage and a board of directors consisting of representatives from Logan and Destiny.
Houston-based Omron Oilfield & Marine, a provider of AC and DC drive systems and rig automation control systems for the oil and gas drilling industry, will partner with the Alberta, Canada-based drawworks provider Alta Rig Systems Inc. to deliver automated control systems for its electric drawworks product line.
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