Vol. 232 No. 7
GE Oil & Gas announced that its Wellstream business, acquired in March, has been awarded a long-term contract by Petrobras for flexible pipe and subsea equipment logistics. The long-term contract is initially valued at over $200 million. Under terms of the contract, GE will build a dedicated 600,000-sq-ft, $90 million flexible pipe and subsea equipment logistics base in Niterói, a commercial hub located about 9 mi outside Rio de Janeiro. Petrobras will use the new facility to support its development of presalt oil and gas field projects in the Campos and Santos basins offshore Brazil. In addition to dedicated warehouses, dewashing and flushing stations, the new facility will feature loading and handling equipment, including the capacity to store 140 reels, to handle loaded reels weighing up to 300 tonnes, and to berth installation and commercial vessels simultaneously, with 8.5 m draft and 220 m in length (28 ft × 720 ft).
Delta Rigging & Tools, a provider of lifting and rigging products and related services in the US, has acquired Williston, North Dakota-based Grizzly Wire Rope and Chain. The acquisition gives Pealrand, Texas-based Delta a foothold in the center of the Bakken oil shale region. Grizzly first opened in 2007 to serve the Williston basin area, and provides wire rope, chain, hardware, cordage, web slings and associated services to customers working primarily in the oil and gas industry. Grizzly will be part of Delta’s Rocky Mountain region, headquartered in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Energy services company Wood Group will plan, manage and execute the commissioning of the Jack and St. Malo semisubmersible hub production facility as part of a 42-month contract with Chevron. Work will be done by DSI, Wood Group’s commissioning services business. The platform will be installed in 7,000 ft of water in the Walker Ridge section of the US Gulf of Mexico and will have an initial design capacity of 170,000 bpd of oil. The commissioning will be performed at a South Texas fabrication yard, where the topsides will be fabricated and integrated with the hull, and offshore during final installation and startup. DSI has commissioned four other deepwater Gulf of Mexico semisubmersibles, including two that had designs similar to that of Jack and St. Malo. Wood Group has supported the Jack and St. Malo project throughout its development. Its subsidiary Mustang is conducting detailed design for the topsides facilities and the integrated control and safety systems, and J P Kenny, also part of Wood Group, is performing detailed design for the deepwater oil export pipeline.
Intecsea is leading a joint industry project to safely and reliably apply a spectrum of existing and emerging production technologies to deliver strategically important subsea developments in remote and hostile environments—particularly in offshore Arctic and cold-climate regions. Frontier developments in cold climates—where ice floes and icebergs are prominent much of the year—and in remote offshore Arctic areas require robust subsea systems that effectively manage the extraction of produced fluids and transportation to the end user. Intecsea kicked off the JIP in December 2010 in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, with completion scheduled for year-end 2011. JIP participants include three oil companies participating in Arctic developments offshore Eastern Canada.The private R&D foundation Petroleum Research Atlantic Canada administers the contractual entity.
Petrobras has given the go-ahead for the bidding process to award contracts for up to 21 offshore drilling rigs to be built in Brazil. Two contracts will be awarded for each rig—a leasing contract to the successful bidder, and a rig operation service contract to a company experienced in operating offshore rigs. Invited companies can submit a proposal for one or more batches of one or more rigs, up to a total of 21 units. The bidding process is part of a strategy for contracting up to 28 new rigs to be built in Brazil for exploration in ultradeep waters, including the presalt fields.
Saudi Aramco’s EXPEC Advanced Research Center announced a new program intended to greatly improve productivity, increase image quality and reduce cost in seismic acquisition and processing. The Automatic Seismic Acquisition and Processing for Exploration and Production (APEX) initiative aims to use robotics technology in 3D seismic data acquisition and to automate key processing tasks such as near-surface and subsurface velocity estimation. Recently, the Saudi national oil company reduced the time required to pick seismic first arrivals for near-surface velocity estimation from months to days for large 3D surveys by developing a fully automatic 3D technology. In addition to growth in channel count, seismic data volume will also increase due to continuous recording associated with simultaneous source acquisition. Simultaneous sources, or blended seismic, refers to an acquisition approach where many seismic sources are being initiated pseudo-randomly in space and time such that their signals interfere with each other. This approach can significantly increase the productivity of seismic acquisition. In 2010, Saudi Aramco set a record of 45,000 shots in 24 hr using this concept.
Malaysian oil and gas service company SapuraCrest Petroleum has opened an expanded regional services center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Covering about 260,000 sq ft, the new $3.5 million facility will enable both Sapura and GE Oil & Gas to enhance support to key oil and gas operators in the region, including Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil and gas company. Petronas has a global frame agreement with GE Oil & Gas for the supply of a range of gas turbines and compressors, and also has a long-term service agreement with Sapura to provide services to GE’s fleet of installed equipment in the country. The Sapura facility provides a wide range of turbomachinery-related services, including maintenance and repairs, designed to enhance the efficiency and performance of GE’s fleet of high-tech heavy-duty and aeroderivative gas turbines and compressors, and will also support GE’s oil and gas drilling and production industry.
Technip subsidiary Duco Ltd. has been awarded a contract by BP for development of Lan Do field in Vietnam. The deal is worth about €15 million ($21.5 million). The field is located 320 km south of Ho Chi Minh City, at a water depth of 390–590 ft. The contract includes the engineering, project management and fabrication of a main umbilical and an infield umbilical. The umbilicals will utilize a hybrid technology developed by Duco that uses steel tubing and thermoplastic hose fluid conduits for hydraulic control and chemical injection services. They will be delivered in the first half of 2012.
Continuing the trend of major energy companies entering the Marcellus shale via acquisitions, ExxonMobil has purchased two western Pennsylvania-based energy companies, Phillips Resources and T. W. Phillips (TWP), for $1.69 billion. The purchases include 317,000 acres of Marcellus shale acreage. ExxonMobil made its original move into the play when it paid $41 billion in December 2009 for XTO Energy. Phillips Resources and TWP have collectively participated in the drilling of more than 50 Marcellus wells. The two companies’ combined proved gas reserves at the end of 2010 were 228 Bcf, with current net production at about 50 MMcfd.
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