Oil and gas discoveries were made in deepwater offshore Angola with the Chissonga prospect, in the UK North Sea with the Hobby and Pink wells, and in the US with the Buckskin discovery. Other wells were also drilled in Kazakhstan, Oman.

More drilling is underway too: “At the end of the first half year of 2009, exploratory drilling[s] were underway in Angola, the USA and Great Britain,” the Danish-based group said.

Total exploration costs for the first half of 2009 were US $303 m, compared with $302 m in the first half last year.

In Denmark Maersk has said development work on the Halfdan field is 50% complete with the installation of a new process platform. Production from Denmark in the first half this year was 17 m bbl, 4% down on the same period last year. “Gas production was approximately 30% lower than in the same period of 2008, mainly due to lower customer take,” the group said in its half-year income statement.

Group oil and gas production in the first half was 81 m bbl, down 8% from 2008 (source: www.offshore.247.com)

The new Global Perspective Subsea Market Update is being launched at Subsea 09 in Aberdeen on Feb.11-12 and at PennWell’s Subsea Tieback Forum & Exhibition in San Antonio March 3-5 (source: www.offshore-mag.com).

The overall development consists currently of 49 subsea wells connected via subsea production, injection lines and risers to a spread moored FPSO. This FPSO will have a processing capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil per day and can store two million barrels, bringing the installed production capacity on block 17 to over 700,000 barrels per day.

The FPSO is currently under construction at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co.Ltd (DSME) in Korea and will have a length of 325 metres, a beam of 61 metres.

DSME awarded the contract to tow the PAZFLOR FPSO from Korea to Angola to Fairmount Marine as well as the contract for providing mooring services upon arrival of the FPSO in the field. The project will be executed towards the end of 2010.

Albert de Heer, Managing Director of Fairmount, and leader of the project team with Operations Director Leo Leusink, Commercial Manager Paul Mulder and Project Manager Ger Leepel commented “We are honoured to be awarded with this very important towage contract by DMSE, after DALIA and UNITY the third recent major FPSO operation in which Total is involved. Fairmount is committed to provide the offshore oil & gas industry with a first class towage service deploying our new fleet of 200 tonnes bollard pull tugs; we are delighted that this commitment and investment is rewarded by the industry with prestigious orders such as PAZFLOR.. More than ever our focus is on delivering top quality complying with the highest standards for Health, Safety and Environment Protection” (source: www.fairmount.nl).

The office in Ukraine is meant to offer customers more opportunities for ‘crewing solutions’. For TOS this is the next step as a global player in total crewing. Ukraine is a true maritime country with leading schools, expert sailors and maritime specialists. The Ukraine is an important base for TOS’ unit Offshore & Maritime Constructions.

TOS specialises in maritime service in crewing solutions, shore jobs, nautical and technical services.

According to Brian Uhlmer, research analyst with Pritchard Capital Partners LLC, Scorpion already had invested about $74 million into it.

“It was contracted with Petrobras and it could not get financed,” he says. “So even with a contract, a well-known yard, a company that—although relatively new has been around a few years now, and has got jackups actually working so they have some operational experience and some cash flows—but they couldn’t get financed.”

Scorpion blames the “continuing turmoil in the global credit market” for its inability to get financing. The company says it has reached amicable agreements with Keppel FELS and third party vendors to terminate the construction contact and equipment orders on “mutually acceptable terms.”

Seadrill also announced today that it has amended its agreements with PPL Shipyard and Keppel FELS for the construction of four new jackups—postponing payments. Seadrill has issued corporate guarantees for the remaining installments on the first two units; no guarantees were made for payments on the second units at the yards.

“But they’re also trying to buy Scorpion which has seven jackups—so they had to make a decision and they realized it would be cheaper to average in and buy all of Scorpion,” Uhlmer says (prior to the official announcement from Seadrill).

In Pride International’s latest monthly fleet update, the company announced its jackup Pride Nevada, which contract ended in December, has been cold stacked. Pride Mississippi was cold stacked after its contract was up in October. Earlier in the year, Pride Alabama and Pride Colorado took the same path (Pride Utah in 2007).

Hercules Offshore has no fewer than nine vessels warm stacked and six cold stacked.
ODS Petrodata reported Hercules 252 and Hercules 250 jackups also have been released and stacked. The company said it expects an additional two Gulf of Mexico jackups stacked as well in the coming weeks.

The US GoM contracted offshore rig fleet utilization rate was at 75.8% at the end of December, with 94 of the 124 offshore rigs deployed. Worldwide offshore rig fleet utilization was at 87.9% (source: offshore-mag.com).

Erdogan told a joint press conference with Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon Magnus that “Turkey wanted to cooperate with Norway in the field of energy and learned from Norway’s advanced technology.”

Erdogan also discussed with Magnus ways to enhance bilateral relations, according to the semi-official Anatolia news agency.

For his part, the Norwegian crown prince said the bilateral ties between the two countries are smooth and he will continue making efforts to further strengthen the relations.

Norway has offered Turkey lots of employment opportunities, as Norwegian maritime companies operating in Turkey employed many Turkish engineers and workers, Magnus told the reporters.

He, meanwhile, said that Turkey is a popular tourist destination for Norwegians, attracting more than 200,000 Norwegians each year.

Magnus arrived in Turkey earlier on Tuesday on a three-day visit. He is expected to attend two seminars on hydro-energy and climate change in Ankara and the opening ceremony of a maritime seminar in Istanbul, according to the report (source: chinaview.cn).

Maritime historians say that’s not particularly surprising. “Pirates have been around for as long as there have been ships on the sea,” says Professor B Arunachalam, academic adviser to Mumbai’s Maritime History Society. Even so, just a few years ago, it seemed the battle against pirates was being won. In 2006, the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors pirate attacks on ships, reported that piracy cases had fallen from 329 in 2004 to just 239. While the good news is that traditional hotspots, such as the Malacca Straits and Indonesia have suffered fewer attacks since 2004, the bad news is that Somalia has emerged as the new locus of piracy.

There are a number of reasons for this. Poverty is rampant in Somalia and it has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Also, it lies close to the strategically important Gulf of Aden, which is used to ship a significant percentage of the world’s oil reserves. In addition, says defence analyst Commodore Uday Bhaskar, piracy in the region is helped by “the diffident and indifferent attitude of most countries”. “Tackling piracy is a complex issue that most countries prefer to avoid. For instance, a ship might be built in one country, fly the flag of another and have a crew of different nationalities. That’s why, when it is hijacked, governments prefer to let the shipping company handle the negotiations. Consequently, we are in the shameful situation that even today, pirates are holding the world to ransom and creating a negative fiscal economy pattern,” he says.

It is ironic that modern technology has actually helped those who ply this ancient trade. Pirates now have advance information about ships, communicate via satellite phones, carry sophisticated weapons and use fast speedboats. However, their modus operandi remains almost similar to their earlier counterparts – that is, operating stealthily and swiftly. Explains Vice Admiral (retd) Mihir Roy of the Society for Indian Ocean Studies, “Somali pirates use large motherships that carry small speedboats. Once they spot the ship they want to target, they stealthily approach it in their small boats and then board it fast. After they have taken over the ship, they steer it into their own waters.”

The Somali pirates’ successes appear to indicate they are getting increasingly audacious. Just last week, they captured the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star in broad daylight, 450 nautical miles south-east of Kenya. Roy says it illustrates that the pirates “now feel that they can get away with anything”.

Incidentally, the port of Eyl, where most of the hijacked vessels are kept, has emerged as a new boom-town, whose economy is being sustained by the piracy industry. Reports indicate that Eyl has many new restaurants to cater to pirates and feed the crews of hijacked ships. Ancillary professions, such as being the pirates’ negotiator and accountant, are in demand.

With India bolstering its naval presence in the Gulf of Aden to tackle piracy off Somalia’s coast, Bhaskar says the problem needs urgently to be tackled at its roots. “Somalia, like Afghanistan, is a failed state. The conditions on land are so bad that many pirates say that they would be happy to be arrested by Europeans, so that they can live in European jails rather than go back to their country,” he says.

Besides the ongoing naval initiative, there’s much more that needs to be done, adds Bhaskar. “India should take the lead in pioneering a diplomatic effort with other countries to address the problems on land. There is already the example of Malacca, where piracy was quarantined due to regional cooperation between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Similarly, there is a strong case for India to encourage a regional naval task force and try to solve the issue by building up a multilateral initiative,” he suggests.

Perhaps, if all this is done fast, India might just emerge as the nemesis of the modern day pirates (timesofindia.indiatimes.com).

If we rely solely on domestically produced oil to become energy-independent, it won’t be long before we run out.

It is not a surprise that America uses about 25 percent of the world’s oil while producing less than half of that. However, there are already 68 million acres on U.S. soil that have gone unused despite the rising costs of gas.

Oil companies presently have Congressional permission to drill and have the ability to act immediately. Adding offshore areas to drill will only delay U.S. independence from oil even longer.

The purpose in tapping into these on-soil oil reserves should be to help the nation transition into the use of alternative energy sources. Scientists are getting closer to an answer every day.

The fact that the world’s oil supply is limited is a major consideration for the future of society. The threat is not that of running out of oil completely, but that of not having enough to sustain our economic needs.

Dr. Robert Hirsch, lead author of The Hirsch Report explains the problem of “peak oil,” with his theory suggesting that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and has been decreasing since. Now is not the time to look for ways to extend the nation’s addiction to oil.

Even if McCain gets Congress to approve off shore drilling plans, it would take ten to twenty years for Americans to see results at the pump. But one would hope that in ten to twenty years the government will have taken bigger steps towards solving the energy crisis.

The increase in potential oil spills will damage tourism and fishing industries while harming marine wildlife. The oceans are essential to keeping the world’s ecosystem balanced. Off shore drilling would cause unnecessary harm, and in return a few cents savings on gas delayed ten to twenty years. Noting that the price of food is also increasing, any further impact to fisheries could push prices further.

McCain says that exploration off shore may provide the country with millions of extra barrels on top of the unused on-soil acres that will save us from the “evil foreign oil.”

But when the U.S has put all its resources into exploring for domestic oil, it cannot possibly thoroughly research alternative fuels.

But McCain’s rhetoric doesn’t deny the importance of alternative fuel research. He says he takes an ‘all of the above’ approach, supporting the study of alternative fuels as well as off shore drilling. But it seems naïve to assume that should congress pass an offshore drilling referendum, equal amounts of money and time would be devoted to researching alternative fuels.

Alternative fuel research is a long term solution to the current state of energy resources. Instead of sucking the world dry of its oil and natural gases, the smarter move would be to plan ahead so society is ready when oil can no longer satisfy the economy. McCain is simply procrastinating facing the fact that there must be a drastic change in energy resource in the near future (source: retrieverweekly.com).