Industry News

As a result of an order issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on 14 November, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has scheduled Lease Sale 261 for 20 December.The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) oil and gas lease sale was originally scheduled for 27 September, and later re-scheduled for 8 November, in response to judicial orders. BOEM announced another postponement on 2 November, following a previous Fifth Circuit court ruling.BOEM will include lease blocks that were previously excluded due to concerns regarding potential impacts to the Rice’s whale population in the GOM. BOEM will

With a backlog of $2.5 billion across 34 contracted rigs as of 30 September, Shelf Drilling remained relatively strong over the past fiscal quarter. CEO David Mullen said as much in the company’s 9 November Q3 2023 earnings call, noting various new contract commencements and improving day rates.A lot of this comes down to the activity within their fleet of jackup rigs over the past quarter, which included the Fortress, Adriatic I, Mentor and Key Singapore securing or beginning new contracts, while the Baltic and Trident II completed contracts of their own as September came to a close.With operations starting

Energy services provider Expro successfully completed a well cement placement project for a large international operator in the US Gulf of Mexico, delivering an inner-string cementing on a subsea well’s 22-in. surface casing in a water depth of approximately 2,000 m in the Mississippi Canyon area. When integrated with Expro’s other well construction technologies, the company’s Cure technology range – including SeaCure, QuikCure and CoreCure – offers a comprehensive package for ultimate cement placement.Expro’s Cure technologies allowed the operator to overcome ongoing offset well challenges. These included prolonged wait on cement (WOC) periods when transitioning directly from the jet string

Petronas’ subsidiary, Petronas Suriname, has made an oil discovery at the Roystonea-1 exploration well in Suriname’s Block 52.The well, located about 185 km offshore at a depth of 904 m, was successfully drilled to a total depth of 5,315 m. It also encountered several oil-bearing Campanian sandstone reservoir packages. Further evaluation is being undertaken to determine the full extent of this discovery and its potential development synergy with the Sloanea-1 discovery made in 2020 within the same block.“Petronas views the Roystonea-1 oil discovery as a positive development towards realizing our differentiated barrel strategy for international upstream ventures, focusing on a

SLB’s End-to-end Emissions Solutions business (SEES) has been selected by Eni to deliver fugitive methane emissions measurement and reporting plans for the operator’s facilities.The project aims to provide Eni with an accurate account of its fugitive methane emissions for transparent reporting purposes and to inform Eni’s strategic efforts to reduce them. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) that has a climate change impact up to 84 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timescale and represents about half of the oil and gas sector’s operational emissions.“Working collaboratively with Eni, we are leveraging our deep knowledge of OGMP 2.0

Valaris announced that ARO Drilling, its 50/50 joint venture with Aramco, has secured financing for its first two newbuild jackups, Kingdom 1 and 2. ARO Drilling entered into a $359 million term loan with a syndicate of local Saudi Arabian banks to finance the deliveries, with the proceeds being used to pay the remaining shipyard purchase price for Kingdom 1 and 2 as well as for general corporate purposes. The loan matures in eight years and has a 16-year amortization profile with a 50% balloon payment due at maturity.Kingdom 1 is expected to be delivered and commence its contract with

Equinor began production from Breidablikk field in the Norwegian North Sea on 20 October, four months ahead of schedule and within budget. Tied back to the Grane platform, the subsea field holds almost 200 million bbl of recoverable oil. The partners are Equinor (operator), Petoro, Vår Energi and ConocoPhillips.“Breidablikk will come on stream four months ahead of schedule, within budget and with higher initial production than expected,” said Geir Tungesvik, Equinor’s Executive VP for Projects, Drilling & Procurement.When the plan for development and operation (PDO) was submitted in September 2020, production from Breidablikk was scheduled to start in the first

Last year, a total of just 48 development wells were drilled and 12 exploration and appraisal (E&A) wells were completed in 2022 in the UK North Sea, says the UK North Sea Transition ity (NSTA). This is against an NSTA baseline ambition of 60 development wells drilled per year to help slow the ongoing decline in production and assist in securing a greater proportion of domestically produced hydrocarbons.According to the NSTA’s latest Wells Insight Report, the UK saw 334 million BOE of potential hydrocarbons discovered in the past three years, and it is important that appraisal and development of this