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Latest news - International

Oil workers abducted from Libya's NOC

Libya's National Oil Corporation says unidentified assailants have abducted workers at a facility belonging to an oil field, hampering daily production. Saturday's statement by the NOC says the assailants kidnapped four staff members working at Station 186 of the Sharara oil field, adding that only two have since been released. It was not immediately clear if foreign workers were among those abducted. Oil wells nearby have been shut down and workers evacuated as a precautionary measure...

China willing to invest $3 billion in Nigerian oil operations

China National Offshore Oil Corp is willing to invest $3 billion in its existing oil and gas operation in Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said on Sunday following a meeting with the Chinese in Abuja. During a visit to Nigeria’s state-owned NNPC, CNOOC Chief Executive Yuan Guangyu said the Beijing-based oil company had invested more than $14 billion in its Nigerian operations and expressed readiness to invest more. Guangyu said Nigeria was their largest inves...

BP Sees Azerbaijan As important Area For Growth

BP is uniquely positioned to develop Azerbaijan’s world-class projects safely, reliably and efficiently, the company told Trend. “As one of the biggest global oil and gas industry leaders, BP will continue to focus its portfolio around core assets and developments which have the potential for significant growth. In the Caspian region, our core business is in Azerbaijan which we see as an important growth area,” said the company. “In Azerbaijan we have built excellent partnerships with...

DSME shortlisted for Chevron’s Rosebank FPSO project

The race to win Chevron’s $2 billion offshore project has been narrowed down to South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co.  (DSME) and a Singaporean rig builder. According to industry sources on Monday, DSME and Singapore-based Sembcorp Marine were shortlisted for the bid from the U.S. energy major to build a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.  The unit is part of Chevron’s Rosebank project to develop oil fields located 175 kilometer...

Aker BP partners with Aker Solutions for modification projects

 Norwegian oil exploration and development company Aker BP has entered an alliance agreement with oil services provider Aker Solutions over modification projects on its Valhall, Ula and Skarv fields in the Norwegian North Sea. The modification alliance is based on the framework agreement signed by BP Norge and Aker Solutions in 2015, and includes complete modification work for the offshore installations on all the three fields. In addition, the alliance agreement will see the deli...

Spirit Energy take over operatorship of Babbage gas field in North Sea

Spirit Energy is all set to become the new operator of the producing Babbage gas field, located in block 48/2a, about 80km off the UK coast in the Southern North Sea. The company, which currently holds a stake of 13% in the Babbage gas field, has reached an agreement with it joint venture partners to take up the operatorship of the license from Premier Oil. Dana Petroleum with a stake of 40% is the third partner in the offshore gas field. In the nearby Cobra discovery as well, Spi...

North Sea workers to strike over pay and conditions

North Sea oil workers are to stage a series of strikes in a dispute over pay and working time. Members of Unite working on the Alwyn, Dunbar and Elgin oil and gas platforms operated by Total E&P will walk out for 24 and 12 hours on five days between July 23 and August 20. There will also be a continuous ban on overtime starting on July 23, following a vote in favour of industrial action. Unite regional officer Wullie Wallace said: "The overwhelming vote in favour of strike act...

Tributes as Piper Alpha hero Iain dies of cancer aged 56

One of the heroes of the Piper Alpha disaster has died of cancer at the age of 56. Iain Letham was a coxswain on the vessel Zodiac, a rigid inflatable craft, which responded to the fire which engulfed the rig in 1988, causing the deaths of 167 men. Without any regard for his own safety, Mr Letham braved the flames during the rescue mission to get to the devastated oil platform and helped save lives amidst the inferno. He said of his experiences during the worst catastrophe in the...

Alpha Offshore Service awarded blade repair contract for OWEZ windfarm

Alpha Offshore Service A/S has been awarded a contract with NoordzeeWind, a Joint Venture between utility company Nuon and Shell, for blade repair on the Offshore Windfarm Egmond aan Zee (OWEZ). The first large windfarm built in the Dutch sector of the North Sea, OWEZ consists of 36 3MW turbines and sits approximately six miles off the coast from the village of Egmond aan Zee. Alpha Offshore will be providing experienced personnel with specialist knowledge of the 44 metre Vestas V90 tu...

Sinopec halts four gas wells after water contamination

Sinopec has halted drilling four wells in a gasfield near the city of Yulin in Shaanxi province, following a government investigation into water contamination in a village nearby, the company said via its official Weibo account on Sunday night. The Yulin Environmental Protection Bureau said on June 21 that iron and manganese content exceeded the maximum level allowed for residential consumption in the village of Zhanggaotu near Yulin. As a result, the city launched an investigation int...

BP becomes front-runner to buy BHP's US shale assets

BP has emerged as the front-runner to buy BHP Billiton's onshore oil and gas operations in the US, according to a person familiar with the matter. The London-based oil giant has made the highest offer for the assets, which BHP prefers selling in a single package, said the person, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn't public. A deal hasn't been completed and it could be weeks before an agreement is reached, the person said. According to Reuters sources, BP has offered...

Equinor buys Danish energy trading company for €400m

Norwegian firm Equinor has bought a Danish energy trading company for €400 million (£354m). The deal supports Equinor’s – formerly Statoil – move from being an upstream oil and gas company towards becoming a “broad energy company”. Danske Commodities (DC), founded in 2004, is also active in short term gas trading and provides energy market services. Last year, it traded 318TWh of electricity across 37 countries – equivalent to more than two times Norway’s annual electricity use –...

Call to turn oil rigs into nature reserves

Marine wildlife could benefit if some de-commissioned oil rigs were left on the sea bed, a survey says. This challenges the conventional wisdom that the sea bed should be restored to its pristine state when a rig's life ends. The paper says over the 30-year lifetime of an oil rig, creatures have often colonised the structure to form a reef. It says this artificial habitat can be more valuable than the original seabed. It can also protect sea creatures from fishing. The p...

International rig count down 8 units in June

The international rig count fell 8 units month-over-month to 959 in June from 967 rigs in May, and down 1 from 960 a year ago, according to Baker Hughes data. The international offshore rig count for June 2018 was 195, down 3 from the 198 counted in May 2018, and down 2 from the 197 counted in June 2017. The worldwide rig count for June 2018 was 2,152, up 56 from the 2,096 counted in May 2018, and up 111 from the 2,041 counted in June 2017. Latin America lost 6 units from the prev...

OPEC expects surge in global production next year

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is expecting supplies from other producers to increase by the most in five years in 2019, with the increasing in the United States’ production alone sufficient to meet the growth in global demand. The economic crisis in Venezuela and the renewed sanctions against Iran continue to represent a challenge for the international organization, OPEC noted in its outlook report for next year, as reported by Bloomberg. “If the world ec...

Equinor gets regulatory nod for Barents Sea exploration drilling

Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) has granted Equinor consent for exploration drilling in two blocks in the Barents Sea. Equinor will investigate a prospect it calls Skruis with exploration well 7220/5-3 in production license 532. The site is 215 km northwest of Sørøya in Finnmark and 150 km northwest of the Goliat field in water depth of 409 m. Drilling activity estimated to last 27 days is scheduled to begin in August. The well will be drilled by the semi-submersibl...

Total closes the acquisition of Engie’s upstream LNG business

Total has announced the closing of the acquisition of Engie’s portfolio of upstream LNG assets for an overall enterprise value of US$1.5 billion. Additional payments of up to $550 million could be payable by Total in case of an improvement in the oil markets in the coming years. This portfolio includes participating interests in liquefaction plants, notably the interest in the Cameron LNG project in the US, long term LNG sales and purchase agreements, an LNG tanker fleet as well as access t...

Norwegian strike would have to last month to hit output.

A four-day oil workers strike in Norway that may escalate on Monday would have to last a month to impact Aker BP’s production from the Valhall field in the North Sea, the Norwegian energy company said on Friday. Chief Executive Karl Johnny Hersvik said activity at the Valhall IP water injection and Valhall DP drilling platforms would stop if the strike is escalated. “If the strike is prolonged it will have later in the year impact on when wells are back in production ... if that is goi...

Norwegian strike would have to last month to hit output.

A four-day oil workers strike in Norway that may escalate on Monday would have to last a month to impact Aker BP’s production from the Valhall field in the North Sea, the Norwegian energy company said on Friday. Chief Executive Karl Johnny Hersvik said activity at the Valhall IP water injection and Valhall DP drilling platforms would stop if the strike is escalated. “If the strike is prolonged it will have later in the year impact on when wells are back in production ... if that is goi...

Will crude oil prices hit $120 per barrel?

Oil prices could jump steeply to cross $120 per barrel in a not-to-be ruled out scenario of zero Iranian exports combined with Opec's lack of preparedness to offset the huge supply deficit, market analysts said.  Iran, the fourth-largest oil producer, accounts for five per cent of global oil supply and cutting its exports to zero could push oil up by $50 barrels per day (bpd) if Saudi cannot keep up, said analysts at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.  Oil is now a game of c...
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