Companies in the news

KCA Deutag’s land drilling operation has won three new contracts in Russia, worth approximately $168 million. The contracts are for eight high-performance land rigs, seven of which were previously built by Bentec, KCAD’s rig and oilfield equipment manufacturer. Under terms of one of the contracts, five rigs will be employed for drilling operations on two fields in Eastern Siberia. Each rig is expected to drill for varying periods of between three and four years. The second contract is for two 1,500-hp Cluster Slider rigs, which will drill in northern Russia. The final contract is for a 2,000-hp land rig that will drill four wells in southern Russia, for a period of five months per well. 

CNOOC China Limited and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. have signed a framework agreement for joint study, joint exploration and facility sharing in the Bohai Sea, Beibu Gulf and South Yellow Sea. Through several joint study agreements—namely, those regarding the Bohai, North Jiangsu and South Yellow Sea basins—both companies will share data and perform innovative joint studies in China. According to CNOOC, the cooperation will promote distribution of sedimentary facies belts and improve understanding of the regularity of hydrocarbon accumulation in cooperative blocks and potential structures in the basins, to optimize the potential of these exploration zones.

Well management and performance improvement specialist Exceed has acquired Managed Pressure Resources (MPR), adding managing pressure drilling engineering and supervisory services to its portfolio. MPR’s team provides small project support, such as gap analysis of management systems and well control manuals for the inclusion of MPD operations, through to full MPD project definition, tendering, contract award and execution. As a combined company, Exceed says it expects to accelerate growth and boost project delivery, competence development and service quality.

Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE), has opened its Center of Excellence facility in Montrose, Scotland. The upgraded facility reportedly will deliver solutions that boost offshore and deepwater productivity, globally. The expanded campus, situated on more than 35 acres, will allow the company to offer product innovation from design to delivery. Moving the new-build operations to one campus is expected to bring greater efficiency for customers and eliminate extra transportation between sites, which the company says will aid in reducing environmental impact. The Montrose expansion represents a £31-million investment by BHGE, and it was supported by a £4.9-million grant from the Scottish government, through Scottish Enterprise.

Maritime Developments (MDL) has secured a follow-up flexible and umbilical installation contract offshore West Africa. The work scope reportedly is a continuation of the EN-09 Project, which concluded in April. The offshore execution will be performed using the VLS on vessel Polar Onyx, and mobilized with the MDL third-generation Reel Drive System. The system will convert the offshore support vessel into a pipelay vessel, eliminating the need to bring in a dedicated pipelay vessel and allowing for smaller work scopes to become more economical. According to MDL, the campaign ultimately aims to develop the West African discovery to deliver ~300 MMbbl over a 20-year span, with 80% of the production consisting of oil. 

Emerson has acquired Zedi’s software and automation businesses. According to the company, the addition of Zedi’s cloud supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platform will further enable it to help oil and gas producers increase production and lower operating costs through cloud-based monitoring, control and optimization. The investment bolsters Emerson’s portfolio, as well as its ability to help customers achieve top quartile performance through emerging IIoT technologies.

Sparrows Group has secured its first contract for the provision of rigging loft maintenance services in Qatar. The four-year contract includes services for the refurbishment, repair, load test and recertification of rigging lofts and contents. Management of the equipment also will include six monthly rigging loft changeouts, provision of replacement or new equipment, and ensuring availability of property certified equipment, as required offshore. 

Tendeka has been awarded a major contract with Equinor for provision of sand-face completion equipment at Troll field. The four-year agreement, which offers an additional five two-year extension periods, will see Tendeka install up to 100,000 m of sand screens, annually, with its FloSure Autonomous Inflow Control Devices (AICDs). The AICD is deployed as part of the lower completion, using zonal isolation packers to divide the reservoir into compartments. It also can be integrated with sand control screens for soft formations.

The Umm Lulu Gas Treatment Plant (ULGTP), one of the world’s largest offshore oil platforms, has been inaugurated by Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Council. The platform—made in the UAE by the National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC), part of Senaat, for ADNOC—weighs 32,000 metric tonnes and measures 77.7x83.5 m. It was manufactured as part of an EPC contract awarded by ADNOC to NPCC, in consortium with TechnipFMC, for the Umm Lulu Package 2 Full Field Development. It primarily will handle gas, including compression, dehydration and sweetening, and makes up a critical part of the field’s infrastructure.

Following a landmark contract win and acquisition of its first asset (the Well-Safe Guardian), Well-Safe Solutions is moving its headquarters in Aberdeen. The decommissioning company, established in 2017, says it has invested several million dollars into the new headquarters, since outgrowing its original offices. The new facility has two floors that can house more than 200 people. Initially, the company will occupy the top floor, allowing itself the option to expand downstairs to accommodate future growth.

Weatherford announced a contract win with a Colombia operator to migrate 3,000 wells to the company’s ForeSite production optimization software platform. Under the newly signed contract, the company will provide all maintenance and services for the software platform for five years, as well as all technical and production services required to enable production performance management. The contract also provides for migrating the operator’s remaining major and minor fields to ForeSite. Weatherford’s production optimization technology extends from the wellbore to the point of sale, encompassing asset-management workflows for the life of any well, from natural flow to all forms of artificial lift in addition to hydrocarbon flow in pipelines and surface facilities. Previously, the operator utilized Weatherford’s LOWIS, a standard well monitoring and lift optimization application. The operator decided to expand its current engagement with Weatherford to also include the company’s industry-leading production optimization technology. The software system is field-proven in some of the world’s most challenging operating environments as a production optimization platform that empowers companies to realize field-wide intelligence to maximize crude output. The Colombian operator will deploy ForeSite production optimization technology to transform their data into performance and allow them to monetize that information.