Oil, gas international News Oct 14

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London-listed player Bowleven has struck oil and gas condensate with the Sapele-3 exploration well drilled in its Etinde permit off Cameroon, confirming more reserves in the Douala basin play. The probe, drilled 16 kilometres north-west of the original discovery well Sapele-1, hit 11 metres of confirmed net hydrocarbon pay in �excellent quality oil-bearing sands� in the upper part of the Deep Omicron interval, the company said in a statement. Gas condensate was also found in seven metres of high-quality sandstone in a shallower Miocene reservoir targeted by the well.

Fred Olsen lands $31m UK drilling deal Norway�s Fred Olsen Energy has bagged a three-well contract for one of its drilling rigs but is keeping the identity of the charterer under wraps. The Oslo-listed rig owner has penned a letter of award from its semi-submersible unit Borgsted Dolphin to drill in the UK sector. The total contract value for the four-month period beginning in mid March next year is $31.5 million. Fred Olsen made no mention of any mobilisation fee or optional contracts.

BP free to bid on new Gulf leases US offshore regulators have decided to allow BP to bid on new oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico later this year. The move by the Bureau of Safety and Envirionmental Enforcement (BSEE) comes less than two years after BP's Macondo well erupted and caused the worst offshore oil spill in US history. While testifying at a congressional hearing Thursday, BSEE chief Michael Bromwich said his agency "considered and thought about this issue quite a lot", but eventually determined to allow BP into an upcoming auction known as Lease Sale 218.

Dockwise seeks debt waiver Heavy-lift transport contractor Dockwise has requested a waiver with a lender syndicate to relax its debt leverage ratio. The move is for �contingency purposes� and would provide �additional headroom in extraordinary market circumstances�, the company said in a statement. Earlier this month, Dockwise revealed a package of measures to ensure it remains within its leverage ratio � or net debt over EBITDA � as agreed with the lender syndicate


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ConocoPhillips has bought Marathon Oil's 30% share in the US� sole LNG export facility for an undisclosed sum, according to a report. The deal, which closed 26 September, gives ConocoPhillips full ownership of the LNG plant in Kenai, Alaska, ConocoPhillips spokeswoman Natalie Lowman told Reuters on Thursday. The 42-year-old Kenai plant, which has been exporting mostly to Tokyo Gas and Tokyo Electric, is still scheduled for mothballing later this year, Lowman said.

Coastal Energy has scored again at acreage off Thailand and is pressing ahead with plans to drill another delineation well this weekend. The US independent has hit 61 feet of net pay in Lower Miocene sands at its Bua Ban North A-08 appraisal well, it revealed on Friday. The well was drilled to a total vertical depth of 3860 feet and struck the hydrocarbons with average porosity of 27%. Data suggests that the column may share common oil water content with the Bua Ban North B field

Australia�s Linc Energy has sealed a US$236 million deal with Houston-based ERG Resources which will see the former gain control of 13 oilfields on the US Gulf coast. Linc confirmed the deal in an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange on Thursday which will see it acquire 156 leases covering an area of about 13,400 acres in the Gulf Coast region of Texas and Louisiana. Linc said all of the fields were either salt domes or geological structures related to deep-seated salt movemen

Total has struck oil and gas at a wildcat well near the Norne field, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate revealed on Thursday. The French supermajor has found both oil and gas in each of its primary and secondary targets at the 6607/12-2 S wildcat in Produciton Licence 127, the NPD stated. An initial estimate of the size of the discovery is between 3 million and 16 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil equivalents.

Ophir Energy is getting its hands on more acreage in East Africa by snapping up Dominion Petroleum in a deal valued at over $186 million. The deal, which is predominantly share based but has a cash element, will "create the largest independent net deepwater acreage portfolio in the emerging and highly prospective hydrocarbon province of East Africa," Ophir wrote in an announcement to the London Stock Exchange on Thursday. News of the deal sent Ophir's shares slumping over 11% before trading opened with Dominion's stock unsurprisingly heading in the opposite direction with an early gain of 35%

The UK government has given BP and its partners the green light to press ahead with its monster Clair Ridge project in the North Sea. The UK supermajor also announced that it has struck a significant new hydrocarbons column at an appraisal well elsewhere on the Clair field. The government approval for Clair Ridge is part of a wider �10 billion ($15.75 billion) investment in the UK North Sea over the next five years by BP and its partners including Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Total investment for the Clair Ridge project west of the Shetland Islands is �4.5 billion. It will involve the construction and installation of two new bridge-linked platforms which are set to be installed in 2015 before coming on stream the following year.

Transocean has confirmed that its ill-fated rig Deepwater Horizon is not the source of recently-reported oil sheens in US Gulf of Mexico. The US rig giant said there was also no sign of any oil near the site of the sunken rig which exploded in April last year killing 11 workers. Recent reports had suggested oil was coming to the surface near the site of the tragedy which led to one of the largest marine spills in history. The US Coast Guard (USCG) reported on Tuesday that the Deepwater Horizon wreckage was not the source of any alleged new oil spills

State-owned PetroVietnam said it submitted a bid this week to buy all of ConocoPhillips�s energy assets in Vietnam to boost production. �It would be very good if we can have the assets, but we will not buy them at any cost,� Nguyen Tien Dung, deputy chief executive of the state-owned company, told Bloomberg in an interview, declining to disclose the size of the bid. A telephone call to ConocoPhillips�s Vietnam unit based in Ho Chi Minh City was referred to the company�s media department in the US. ConocoPhillips did not respond to a voice message left on its hotline in Houston, Bloomberg said. ConocoPhillips, the third-largest US oil producer, aims to sell as much as $10 billion of assets by the end of next year to help fund share buybacks and future growth.

Greek player Ocean Rig has inked contracts with two mystery independents to drill a total of three wells off West Africa. The Oslo-listed offshoot of parent shipping company DryShips had recently revealed that it was close to sealing a deal for its semi-submersible drilling rig Eirik Raude for work in the region. Ocean Rig announced on Wednesday that two companies, based in the US and UK, have signed up for the unit to drill three additional wells. The company put the total revenue backlog from the three deals at $96 million. Finance chief Ziad Nakhleh would not be drawn further on the identity of the charterers or the exact dayrates, but said the rates are broadly similar across all three contracts.

BP has drawn up a contingency plan to tackle a catastrophic oil spill that would dwarf the Macondo disaster as part of a deep drilling effort lined up off the Shetland Islands, according to a report. An internal document prepared by the UK supermajor, obtained by the Independent, reveals that a leak from the planned North Uist exploration well lined up for next year could result in 75,000 barrels per day of oil escaping into the water over a period of 140 days.

New Zealand-based L&M Energy will start a coal bed methane appraisal programme within its Kaitangata permit, 60 kilometres south of Dunedin on New Zealand�s South Island. The first well to be drilled on the PEP 38219 permit, Wangaloa-1, will reach a depth of 515 metres and test five coal horizons within the area, L&M said. The company added that it would case and suspend the well as a future production facility in order to carry out further testing at a later date

Shares of Singapore-listed Sky China Petroleum Services slumped as much as 32% to a record low after the company said its auditors, Ernst & Young, had resigned. This is the latest in a string of auditor resignations that have hit Chinese stocks listed in Singapore and the United States, sending investors running, Reuters reported. Shares of Sky China have fallen 24.3% to S$0.059, with more than 18.4 million shares changing hands. This was three times its average daily volume over the last five sessions. Sky China shares fell 23% on Monday.

UK minnow New World Oil & Gas has firmed up its proposed deal in Denmark by penning a pair of farm-in contracts. The London-listed company is set to take a 12.5% interest and become operator in licences 1/09 and 2/09 in the Jutland on shore play in the south-west of the country. New World will kick off a 2D seismic survey in the second quarter next year costing a total of $1.25 million. The Jersey-based company then has the option to double this stake to 25% by carrying out another round of seismic over the area which is 4107 square kilometres

Engineering and construction company Decmil Australia has won the A$70 million (US$69.9 million) contract for the 502-room Fly Camp for Chevron�s Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project. Decmil will design, supply and install the camp as well as kitchen and dining facilities, offices and utilities including a waste water treatment plant under the contract. Work is expected to start on the contract in December this year, and is expected to be completed by August 2012. Decmil chief executive Scott Criddle said the award would mean early involvement for the company in what he said would be a significant project for Australia�s oil and gas sector

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Offshore driller Atwood Oceanics is looking to cash in on increasing energy services demand in Brazil, and expects to work with energy major Petrobras, its chief executive said in an interview.Demand for oil in Brazil is projected to grow by more than 5% a year in 2011-15, and domestic consumption is seen almost doubling to 3.1 million barrels per day by 2020, Reuters reported. "We want to make sure our rigs have a great opportunity to work with clients with a need for those rigs, and Petrobras is certainly one of those potential customers," the news wire quoted Robert Saltiel as saying in a telephone interview. He gave no timetable for when contracts might come through

An explosion at a pipeline in Nigeria has led Shell to declare force majeure on some crude oil exports from the country for almost three months. The Anglo-Dutch supermajor was informed of a leak on the Trans Forcados pipeline on 6 October but it is unclear when the explosion occurred. The force majeure came into effect at noon local time on Monday and is expected to remain in force through the remainder of 2011. A statement from Shell said a Nigerian investigation �found that [the leak] was caused by explosive damage�. Shell Petroleum Development Company, the company�s offshoot in Nigeria, �is working to repair the pipeline and resume production as quickly as possible,� the statement continued.

Ecuador said on Monday it was seeking $504 million in damages from a subsidiary of US energy company ConocoPhillips for alleged environmental damage in the South American OPEC member nation, a report said. Ecuador's counter-suit against Burlington Resources Oriente was made on 30 September, Reuters reported. It is related to an ongoing case at a World Bank tribunal where the company is seeking compensation related to confiscation of assets in 2009, the attorney general's office said.

Exxon Mobil said it had no reason to believe an oil sheen on the Yellowstone River in Montana came from its Billings refinery, but it had moved to contain the oil to minimize any environmental impact, a report said Monday. "At approximately 3:30 pm on Friday, 7 October, an oil sheen was observed on the Yellowstone River upstream of the refinery," Reuters quoted Exxon spokeswoman Rachael Moore as saying. Moore said an oil-spill response team for the 60,000-barrels-per-day refinery had laid a containment boom at the point of origin. A spokesman for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality said ConocoPhillips' 58,000-bpd refinery in Billings is located north of Exxon's on the river and that they shared some pipelines and infrastructure. A spokesman for ConocoPhillips said it did not believe the sheen was related to them

Drilling contractor KCA Deutag has secured a contract said to be worth more than $100 million from TAQA Bratani for services to four North Sea platforms. The three-year contract is to supply platform drilling and maintenance services to Eider, Tern, North Cormorant and Cormorant Alpha drilling platforms. A spokesperson for the company confirmed to Upstream that the associated revenue from the deal was a nine-figure sum, i.e. $100 million or more, but said the contract terms precluded it from disclosing further details on the deal's value. KCA Deutag chief executive Holger Temmen said the deal reconfirmed the company�s top position in the North Sea drilling market. �We have retained our position as North Sea market leader over the past 16 years, while opportunities overseas have grown considerably�, Temmen commented in a statement

BP has won another round in its ongoing feud with a shareholder of a Russian subsidiary as a Siberian court overturned a ruling related to searches of the company�s office in Moscow earlier this year. The Arbitration Court in the city of Omsk found in favour of the UK supermajor in its appeal against a July ruling in a separate Russian court which allowed bailiffs to descend on the offices of BP Exploration Operating Company (BP EOC) on 31 August. Monday�s ruling by the Omsk court overturns the 19 July ruling in Tyumen in favour of a minority shareholder in TNK-BP, the oil giant�s joint venture in Russia, even though that search order had itself been effectively quashed by the Tyumen court in mid September

The death toll from a workplace accident at Keppel�s Subic shipyard in the Philippines has risen, after the company confirmed the death of a sixth worker on Friday night. Five workers were killed and another seven injured on 7 October when the stern ramp under which they were standing collapsed when scaffolding supporting the structure was hit by another ramp during the repair of a vessel.

UK independent Premier Oil has started oil production at its Chim Sao field in Vietnam. Premier operates Block 12W in the Chim Sao field, where it expects output from six wells to plateau at around 25,000 barrels of oil per day. Gas production is expected to be around 25 million cubic feet per day. Oil from Chim Sao, located about 310 kilometres off southern Vietnam, will be exported via shuttle tanker and its gas will connect into existing infrastructure via subsea pipeline. Premier holds a 53.125% equity interest in the Nam Con Son Basin block with partners Santos (32%) and PetroVietnam Exploration Production Corporation (15%)

Thailand aims to revive a long-stalled plan to become an oil trading and biofuel hub in Southeast Asia, challenging Singapore's dominance, its new energy minister said on Thursday. Pichai Naripthaphan said the net oil importer plans to boost its crude reserves to 29 days from the current 18 days in order to improve energy security, as consumers face volatile crude prices which continue to hold above $100 a barrel. "If we have the land bridge, Thailand has the potential to become a centre for oil trading and a leader in biofuel in the region," he said without giving details when the plan will take shape, Reuters reported

Output at Iraq's Rumaila oilfield has been cut to 530,000 barrels per day from about 1.24 million bpd after two bombs hit pipelines on Friday and halted some production, a senior Iraqi oil official said on Saturday. Dhiya Jaffar, the head of state-run South Oil Company told Reuters the approximately 700,000 bpd in halted output could be resumed partially from Rumaila on Sunday and it could take three days to restore normal production at the field. He said stored oil would keep export levels the same

Libya's National Oil Company said they would strike Workers protesting at the headquarters of Libya's National Oil Company on Sunday said they would strike until managers were replaced and possibly tried for fighting alongside Gaddafi. Most of the crowd worked for Waha Oil, a joint venture with American companies ConocoPhillips , Marathon and Amerada Hess, Reuters reported. Documents proving managers had used the Waha Oil complex as a base for Gaddafi fighters had been presented to the NOC chairman that morning, protesters said. The oil fields had been targeted by Nato because they were used to feed, shelter and equip loyalist fighters, according to the workers, who said it could take four to six months to restart flows. "There is a lot of damage at the fields ... especially at Gialo and Waha," said Ahmed Zahmun, a Waha Oil protester.

French engineering firm Technip has scooped a pair of contracts from Shell to install umbilical systems at two fields in the Gulf of Mexico. The Anglo-Dutch supermajor has taken on Technip�s subsidiary Duco to build and install the umbilical systems at the Cardamom and West Boreas field developments. The Cardamom project will involve 9265 metres of umbilicals while West Boreas will need 6096 metres, a statement from Technip reads on Monday The French company did not, however, reveal any financial details while a Technip spokesperson could not be drawn on the contract price. The umbilical systems will be built at Duco�s Houston facility and are set for delivery in the second half of next year.

New Zealand oil ship leak 'raises questions' New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key says "serious questions" must be answered about why a container ship ran aground on a reef off one of the country's most spectacular coastlines. Oil leaking from the Liberian-flagged Rena has created a 5-km (3-mile) slick.An all-out effort is under way to remove nearly 2,000 tonnes of oil from the vessel, which is stranded 12 nautical miles off the coast.Heavy swells and gale-force winds are forecast for the area from Monday.


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Emotions boil over on pipeline The high-profile debate over a 1700-mile oil pipeline that TransCanada wants to build through the heart of the US got personal Friday, as the State Department wrapped up a series of public hearings with an event in Washington, DC, that drew hundreds of supporters and opponents.

German oil and gas company Wintershall was restarting oil fields in Libya with a combined capacity of 100,000 barrels per day on Friday after a team of some 20 key workers were flown to the south-eastern desert, according to a report. The skeleton team is around a tenth of the pre-war work force. Workers told a Reuters reporter in the area that capacity could ramp up to as much as 40,000 bpd before foreign workers and other Libyans still too nervous to return joined them at the sites. The process could take some weeks, they said, depending on the state of the wells and pipelines.

Texas imposing water limits on fracking An intensifying drought in Texas is prompting limits on water consumption that for the first time target oil and natural gas producers, according to a report. Local water districts, which have authority to allocate water from subterranean aquifers, are adding a water-intensive production method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to some of the pumping restrictions they�re imposing on farmers and small towns, Bloomberg reported. The city of Grand Prairie in the Barnett shale in North Texas in August became the first municipality to ban the use of city water for fracking. Water officials for the Ogallala Aquifer in part of the Permian basin included fracking when they approved the district�s first-ever restrictions on water use in July.

Seadrill has secured its second lucrative rig newbuilding charter contract of the day after Tullow Oil stepped in for a one-year deal off West Africa. The Norwegian rig owner is landing at least $204 million from the short-term deal for the West Leo for work off Ghana next year. The West Leo is Seadrill�s last ultra-deepwater semi-submersible newbuilding on order at Singapore�s Jurong Shipyard with delivery expected in late January. The rig will head straight for the Tullow job which is slated to begin in mid April.

Five workers died and seven were injured Friday morning when a scaffold collapsed at a repair dock at a Keppel shipyard in the Philippines, the company said. The contractor is a major global player in design, construction and repair of specialty vessels and rigs, including FPSO units. A �stern ramp� at the Keppel Subic Shipyard fell on a section of scaffolding that supported a ramp where the employees were working, president and general manager Mok Kim Whang said in a statement. �We would like to offer our deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and we are rendering the necessary assistance to them,� he said, adding that the injured were brought to a hospital. The shipyard is investigating the incident and �cooperating with the authorities,� the company said.

The Shell and Noble-owned Bully I drillship is headed to the Gulf of Mexico to work on the supermajor�s Mars B development in December, the companies said.A fleet status report indicated the move of the dynamically-positioned, ultra-deepwater vessel, which Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh confirmed to Upstream. First oil from the field's Olympus facility is expected in 2015. �The unit is en route from Singapore to the Gulf of Mexico, where it will complete the commissioning and acceptance tests that need to be done on location,� she said. �The unit will start operations towards the end of 2011 on the Mars B development.� The dayrate will be $440,000 to $445,000 for that project, Noble�s report said



Brazilian giant Petrobras will finish the year at the lower range of its production target after a �global bottleneck� delayed rig deliveries, its chief executive officer said, according to a report. Petrobras will be within 2.5% of its 2.1 million barrel-per-day target for domestic crude production, chief executive Jose Sergio Gabrielli told Bloomberg on Thrsday at the Global Economic Symposium in Kiel, Germany. Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras received seven of the 13 drilling rigs it expected this year from international suppliers, he said. �The ramp up takes time and it very much depends on the drilling capacity we have, and drilling capacity requires drilling rigs,� Gabrielli said. �It�s a global bottleneck.� Petrobras plans to more than double Brazilian oil production over the next decade as it develops the largest discoveries in the western hemisphere since Mexico discovered the Cantarell field in 1976.

In-demand rig owner Seadrill could be set for an acquisition splurge as it lines up another $550 million term loan. The Norwegian outfit, controlled by shipping billionaire John Fredriksen, has netted the large senior secured credit facility from a number of unnamed lenders. The new loan has a tenor of five years and an amortisation profile of 10 years, the Oslo-listed company revealed in a bourse announcement late on Friday afternoon. Seadrill has put up its ultra-deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig newbuilding West Capricorn as security on the loan.


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Seadrill has set up a five-year deal worth $919 million for the use of its ultra-deepwater semi-submersible rig West Capricorn in North American waters with a �major oil company� it has not name. In an announcement, the deepwater drilling company said it had a memorandum of understanding with the oil company for the use of the rig, which is currently under construction at Singapore�s Jurong Shipyard. The contract, which includes a $30 million mobilisation fee, could be extended for two further one-year periods by the oil company, Seadrill said. The $919 million tab suggests a dayrate of approximately $487,000. West Capricorn is scheduled to be delivered to North America in late December, with start-up operations scheduled for May 2012.

Statoil is looking to take its rig fleet renewal programme in Norway to the next level and is in talks with rig owners about ordering what would be the largest jack-up drilling rigs ever built.Upstream staff 07 October 2011 08:21 GMT Building on some of the lessons learned through its recent tender to build Category-D semi-submersible workhorse rigs, the Norwegian state oil company has requested expressions of interest from jack-up owners for what have been labelled Category-J rigs.

Offshore rig fleet owner Noble Corp will send its Noble Duchess drillship to waters off India by March for the start of an anticipated three-year contract with Oil and Gas Corporation. In its latest fleet summary, Noble said it had secured a letter of intent for the vessel to work on ONGC-operated project at a daily rate of $180,000 � lower than previously reported by Upstream. The rig had previously been set aside awaiting work in Nigeria. Noble also said it had secured a six-month contract in the North Sea with Korea National Oil Company, through Dana Petroleum, which had signed a letter of intent for the use of jackup Noble Lynda Bossler at a day rate of $125,000 � up from the $88,000 it was currently paying. Noble also secured a three-month contract for previously stacked shallow-water jackup rig Noble Dick Favor from Occidental Petroleum, starting November off Bahrain at a day rate or $95,000

Norwegian rescue services were set to intensify their search for a missing worker off the Visund platform on Friday morning as hopes fade he will be found alive. The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre said on Thursday night it would add another vessel and a helicopter to the search in the Tampen area of the North Sea beginning at dawn. The emergency service said, however, that it was now thought unlikely the 48-year-old man would be found alive in the sea. They suspended their search at 6pm last night. Statoil continued to search the waters through the night using the Stril Herkules vessel, and a search and rescue dog has been sent to assist in the ongoing search on board the platform

Staff on British offshore oil and gas installations are getting younger and less experienced on average, according to a new report by Oil & Gas UK.The demographic statistics released by the industry trade association show that the rising trend of more workers aged under 30 over the past five years has continued in 2010. However, at the same time the number of workers aged 30 to 60 has decreased, something the association has said �raises concerns about a possible future shortage of supervisors�. Workers in this age range tend to relocate to other oil and gas regions around the world or return to onshore roles, Oil & Gas UK said.

A search and rescue mission has been launched in the North Sea after a man was reported missing from Statoil�s Visund platform earlier on Thursday. The Norwegian operator said two helicopters and four vessels are being used in the search for the missing worker, who is employed by a contractor. A Statoil spokesman told Upstream the individual was last seen onboard the platform at 10pm on Wednesday and was reported missing at 9.24am on Thursday after he failed to report for work. The spokesman said the next-of-kin of the missing person, reported to be aged 48, have been informed.

Thing getting back to normal after Canadian oil and gas company Sonde Resources has lifted the force majeure declared on a block offshore Libya after the Canadian government repealed its sanctions against the strife-torn nation. The force majeure on the 7th of November block, which straddles the waters of Libya and Tunisia, was lifted following the adoption of Resolution 2009 (2011) by the United Nations Security Council and the Canadian government�s amendments of regulations implementing those resolutions. Sonde chief executive Jack Schanck said the company was sorry to have interrupted its operations.

Occidental Petroleum restarted Libyan production A Libyan oil field partly owned by Occidental Petroleum restarted production Wednesday as planned, a local official said Thursday, making it the first US company to get some crude back up in the country since Moammar Gadhafi's overthrow, a report said. The news comes after production resumption at Libyan joint-ventures with Eni and Total in recent weeks, Dow Jones reported. State-owned Arabian Gulf Oil restarted the 70,000 barrels per day Nafoora field, where Occidental Petroleum and Austria's OMV are shareholders, Agoco spokesman Abduljalil Mayouf said. Occidental and OMV have previously referred a request for comment to Agoco, the operator. Staff from the two foreign companies pulled out from Libya when the civil war erupted there in February. Mayouf said it was unclear when foreign staff from Occidental would return but said Agoco was in contact with the company.

Ensco firms up Keppel rig order , Drilling behemoth Ensco has hatched an option for a rig newbuilding at Keppel Fels but has let a further optional contract go. The New York-listed company also revealed on Thursday that it has extended the option period on a drillship at a South Korean yard until later in the year.

E.ON Ruhrgas has announced a gas discovery on the Tolmount prospect in the southern UK North Sea. The discovery is located in Block 42/28d to the west of the E.ON-operated Babbage gas field. The German-based company said it encountered a gas column in excess of 200 feet, with a well test flowing at a maximum stable rate of 50 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. The exploration well targeting the Permian Leman Sandstone Formation was drilled using the Ensco 92 jack-up drilling rig.

Australia-based Blue Energy has spudded the Sapphire-4 core and pilot well on the Sapphire block of ATP814P after confirming a gas find at another well on the same permit, targeting the Bowen basin. In an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange, the company said its drilling rig was en route to the Sapphire block, near the Arrow Energy-operated Moranbah power station � 1048 kilometres north of Brisbane.
Rig giant Transocean has finalised its acquisition of Norway�s Aker Drilling. Transocean paid NOK 26.50 per share, or about $1.43 billion, for full ownership of Aker. It also assumed $800 million of Aker�s outstanding debt. The Switzerland-based company said the acquisition, announced in August, would add about $1 billion in backlog. The deal also adds to Transocean�s fleet two harsh environment semi-submersible drilling rigs and two drillships that are under construction for Aker at the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine shipyard in South Korea. "With the close of this transaction we've immediately enhanced the overall makeup of our fleet, strengthened our position in Norway, and furthered our competitive position in the marketplace through the addition of high-spec assets and exceptional people," Transocean chief executive Steven Newman said in a statement.

Italian oil major Eni fears its largest oilfield in Libya, known as Elephant, may be in ruins, which could dash hopes of a speedy return of Libyan supplies to global markets after months of war, a report Wednesday said. "One volunteer went with a squad of 10 rebel fighters, who escorted him on a two-to-three-hour survey in which he took pictures of the mess," Eni's Libyan operations manager, Mustafa Abougfeefa, said in an interview according to Reuters. The field, which pumped 130,000 barrels of oil per day before the war, saw its airport completely destroyed along with crucial monitors and key electronic structures, he told the news wire. "We cannot promise the field will start producing before the end of the year. Gaddafi's militia destroyed everything," Abougfeefa said. The process could take even longer because the area remains a hotbed of violence where clashes between rebel fighters and troops of former leader Muammar Gaddafi continue.

Canada�s Precision Drilling has landed contracts for eight new drilling rigs but has remained mum on much of the details of the deals. The Calgary-based outfit would appear to be building the units, composed of two different types, for unconventional oil and gas plays in North America. Four of the rigs are Super Single rigs for use in the Canadian market with the other quartet Super Triple 1200 rigs for work in the US, a statement from the company read on Wednesday

Australia-based Target Energy has struck oil at its Fairway project in Texas � Howard County, the company has announced. Target�s BOA 12-1 well had found potential oil and gas pay at all its primary and secondary targets, with the company now set to complete it as a producing well. Initial reviews of log data confirmed potential productivity at the Wolfberry zone at 1080 metres and below, in the Clearfork formation and the Fusselman formation, where the well will initially be completed. The Wolfberry zone has the potential to recover up to 180 million barrels of oil equivalent and the Fusselman formation could recover up to 80 million barrels of oil, Target said

Italian energy giant Eni said it has presented a field development plan to the Indonesian authorities for the deep-water Jangkrik gas field east of Kalimantan. The company did not divulge any conceptual details but said Jangkrik would come on stream in 2015 "thanks to fast development activity". Eni owns a 55% operating interest in the Muara Bakau licence with GDF Suez holding the remaining 45% stake. The pair have made several discoveries in the block including the recent Jangkrik North East well, which hit more than 60 metres of net gas pay in excellent-quality Pliocene and Miocene sands

UK-listed EnCore Oil has recommended its shareholders accept a �221 million (US$340 million) takeover bid from fellow UK company Premier Oil, saying the move would de-risk its development portfolio. Under the deal, Premier will acquire all of EnCore�s issued capital for either 70 pence in cash or 0.2067 new Premier shares for each EnCore share held, the companies said in an announcement. The deal will be funded entirely from Premier�s cash reserves, with the offer representing a premium of about 55% to EnCore�s closing price. Should the move proceed, Premier�s in stake UK licence PL 1430 � also known as the Catcher area � would increase by 15% to a total of 50%, giving it operatorship of the project.

Environmental groups have called on US president Barack Obama to disregard recommendations made by the State Department on TransCanada�s proposed Keystone XL pipeline after an email exchange allegedly showed bias by the agency in favour of the company. In a letter sent to the president on Tuesday, Friends of the Earth (FOE) and other groups opposing the pipeline say the State Department �abdicated its responsibility� to impartially evaluate TransCanada�s proposal. The letter comes a day after a second batch of emails was released to FOE that the group says demonstrate a �cozy relationship� between Department officials and Paul Elliott, TransCanada�s chief Washington lobbyist.

Pirate attack reported in Tanzania Pirates attacked a drillship working for Petrobras off Tanzania Monday, but authorities fended off the assailants and arrested seven in connection with the incident, a report said. The attack on the brand-new Ocean Rig Poseidon comes scarcely a month after the state-owned Brazilian firm began its drilling programme in Tanzania, whose ample gas reserves have caught the interest of major outside oil firms. Reuters reported that an emergency response center was notified of an attack on the drillship, owned by the Oslo-listed Ocean Rig, according to a statement Tuesday from Tanzania's Registrar of Ships.

Brazil�s Delba Drilling has finally gotten its hands on the second of two drilling rig newbuildings which were significantly delayed at an Abu Dhabi-based yard. Contractor SBM Offshore revealed on Tuesday that the semi-submersible unit Delba III had been handed over to Delba off the emirate by local firm International Management & Construction Corporation (IMCC). The Delba III follows the Norbe VI to Delba, but the construction of both at IMCC�s Gulf Piping Company ran into difficulties over what IMCC described last year as �technical issues� and delays to engineering and equipment deliveries. In July last year the builder said it expected the Delba III to be delivered at the end of 2010.

'Ex-West Atlas behind Safin�s Keppel deal' An ill-fated ex-Seadrill jack-up rig which was destroyed by an inferno off Australia two years ago is rumoured to be the unit sent to Keppel Fels by Safin Gulf for upgrading work. The ex-West Atlas is understood to be the subject of a $199 million contract penned between the Singaporean shipyard group and Austria�s Safin and announced this week, according to a market note from Norwegian bank DnB NOR. Keppel Fels will deliver the refurbished KFELS B Class jack-up rig, which Keppel said it had purchased earlier this year, to Safin by the third quarter of 2012, the yard wrote in a statement on Monday.

Songa Offshore has bagged at least another $240 million from Statoil after the latter penned a contract extension for a drilling rig off Norway. The Norwegian oil giant could yet extend the contract for the semi-submersible unit Songa Dee at the Gullfaks field for another year following the latest deal between the pair. In October last year Statoil signed on for the Songa Dee for a firm three years for $378 million. At the time the oil company had an option to extend the contract by one year but this optional period was increased to two years. Songa revealed on Tuesday that Statoil has now firmed up its existing optional contracts, taking the firm charter period up to five years and the total contract price to $620 million. Further, the Oslo-listed rig owner revealed that Statoil now retains another one-year option on the unit

Ensco has won a drilling contract for an Eni-operated project in the Timor Sea, farm-in partner MEO Australia has announced. Ensco will provide its jack-up drilling rig Ensco 109 to support the Heron-3 drilling campaign in permit area NT-P68, targeting oil in the Bonaparte basin, off the coast of Australia�s Northern Territory. Eni has contracted to have one 70-day slot in order to drill the well following completion of the rig�s work for PTTEP, which is anticipated to be in early March 2012. The well is the first of a two-well farm-in by Eni to the Heron gas discovery on the permit� with Eni to earn a 50% stake in the discovery and surrounding area by funding the drilling of the Heron-3 and Heron-4 wells.

A Chinese oil worker has been killed and another wounded by unidentified gunmen in South Kordofan, Sudan's only oil producing state where the army is battling insurgents, the Chinese embassy said Monday. "There was a violent incident against Chinese workers by unidentified armed men, which caused one death and one wounded," an embassy spokesman told Agence France Press, adding that the attack took place last Wednesday. He said the embassy had raised its concerns with the Sudanese government, urging action to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals.

Engineering company Amec has won a front end engineering design contract for the Cygnus gas field development worth �50 million ($77.7 million), the company has announced. The FEED contract for the GDF Suez development, located in the North Sea, starts immediately and is scheduled for completion in 2012, Amec said in an announcement. The contract includes work on the 'option to proceed' into the detailed design and procurement phase, and is expected to create about 150 new jobs at peak.

PETROCHINA'S acquisition of Queensland coal-seam gas player Bow Energy is the latest in a growing global trend of acquisitions by Chinese oil and gas companies. And with China's government determined to see the country lessen its dependence on foreign ...

The President said that �Cairn India� Company has discovered this gas deposits and informed to him. The Indian company has already started rigging for oil in the Mannar basin. The President further said that he is extremely happy for this new discovery ...

"There has been a string of films that have tried to portray oil and gas and other energy sources as bad," said Mark Mathis, the film's writer and director. "This is the first film that questions the premise." The documentary is the latest entry in the ...

They said that amongst the listed companies, Pakistan Oilfields (POL) has initiate its 1st exploratory well of the year while Oil and Gas Development (OGDC) and Pakistan Petroleum (PPL) has yet to drill for new hydrocarbon reserve this year. ...

Thanks to new techniques for horizontal drilling for shale gas production in the United States, and other new technologies to extract oil from Canada's oil sands, or from Brazil's off-shore �pre-salt� deposits, these and other reserves in the Americas ...

Keppel FELS Limited (Keppel FELS) is on track to deliver Vietnam's first semisubmersible drilling tender (SSDT) to PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Services Corp (PV Drilling) ahead of schedule, within budget and with a perfect safety record.

Venezuela�s state-run oil company expects to order 20 drilling rigs in 2015, topping plans to manufacture 11 rigs each in 2011 and 2012, a PDVSA official said Friday according to local reports. Ower Manrique, president of PDVSA Industrial, said the company will order $500 million worth of equipment tailored to its extra-heavy Orinoco oil, the El Universal newspaper quoted him as saying. "We have a package of specific proposals to adapt our equipment to the needs of the belt and to speed up oil production in the area," he said, according to the newspaper. Full production is expected from the Monagas rig facility in 201

BP said Friday a plan to sell its stake in Argentina-based oil and gas group Pan American Energy to Bridas, half-owned by China's CNOOC, for $7 billion was still on, countering a prior report that Argentine opposition could scupper it. A Bloomberg report said the deal was at risk of collapse due to opposition from Argentine politicians, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. Reuters reported that BP declined to repeat earlier guidance that the deal would be concluded in 2011, but said it saw no barrier to a sale.

Gunmen boarded a ship supplying an ExxonMobil oil platform offshore Nigeria on Friday, wounding one on board and abducting another, the local unit of the supermajor said according to a report."Mobil Producing Nigeria, operator of the joint venture with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, confirms that in the early hours of Friday, some armed men attacked a supply vessel near one of our platforms, offshore Akwa Ibom State," an ExxonMobil spokesman said, according to Reuters. One person on the vessel was injured, and another "was taken away to an unknown destination", the spokesman said. "The incident has been reported to security and relevant government agencies."

A Venezuelan official on Friday vowed to swear off new energy investments in the US , local reports in Caracas said. �We will not make investments in the US. That is a political decision,� Jes�s Luongo, a director at the state-owned PDVSA oil company, said at an oil conference in north Venezuela, according to the El Universal newspaper. Venezuela has already divested from various pipelines, oil terminal facilities and the Lyondell-Citgo refining system, and the sale of more assets could be on the way, Luongo said

Italy�s Saipem has scooped two engineering and construction contracts in Russia and Indonesia worth a total of $676 million. In Russia, Gazprom Dobycha Shelf awarded the Milanese company a subsea development contract along with Mezhregiontruboprovostroy as part of the Sakhalin 3 project in the Russian Far East. The project is located at the Kirinskoye Gas Condensate Field which lies in a water depth of up to 85 metres in the sea of Okhotsk around 28 kilometres off the east coast of Sakhalin Island. The project is the first subsea development of its kind in Russia, the company said in a statement on Friday. The scope of work includes: engineering, procurement, fabrication and installation of subsea structures; planned connections to subsea wells; network of infield umbilicals and shore approach to the main inland; and survey activities in the field.

Spain's Repsol has reasserted that its plans to drill for oil off Cuba comply with US law, after 34 Congress members said it could face commercial risks and lawsuits in the US. Repsol's plans to begin drilling later this year in Communist-ruled Cuba's deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico has sparked opposition in the neighbouring US state of Florida, which is home to many Cuban exiles. US representatives led by Cuban-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wrote to Repsol executive chairman Antonio Brufau on 27 September warning the company could harm its commercial interests with the US if it went ahead with drilling, Reuters reported

Singapore-based Keppel Shipyard has secured three vessel conversion contracts worth S$142 million (US$109.6 million), the Keppel Fels sister company has announced. The company will convert a very large crude carrier into a floating storage and offloading unit for Perenco Group subsidiary Dixstone Holdings, which is currently working with the Cameroon National Hydrocarbons Corporation.

Swedish explorer Lundin Petroleum believes it is sitting on a �sleeping giant� after upgrading reserves estimates at its Avaldsnes discovery in the North Sea and sees further upside potential as it works with Statoil on a fast-track development. The combined Avaldsnes and Aldous Major South finds off Norway, operated by Lundin and Statoil respectively, �should now be seen as one field�, with the same reservoir and oil type, Lundin chief executive Ashley Heppenstall told a presentation on Friday. Lundin has upgraded recoverable reserves in Avaldsnes licence PL501 to between 800 million and 1.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent, putting the combined contingent resource range of the two discoveries at between 1.2 billion and 2.6 billion boe.

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