A few weeks ago, it was as if the oil & gas industry was staring into a “dimensionless black hole,” but now it is traveling through a long, dark tunnel with a “small light” at the end, according to Mark Corrigan, Schlumberger’s president for oilfield services covering Europe, Africa and the Caspian.

Delivering the second-day keynote at the IADC World Drilling 2009 Conference in Dublin on 18 June, he said that it was right for companies to batten down the hatches in order to ride out the current economic storm. However, it was essential to plan for better times ahead, perhaps around 2011 when supply and demand for petroleum appears likely to come back into reasonable balance.

A traditional and, as it turns out, blind assumption is being made that there is a direct correlation between the North American rig count and production, according to Alan Orr of Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Co.

Mr Orr told the IADC World Drilling 2009 Conference & Exhibition in Dublin on 18 June that little account appeared to be taken of what is actually out there drilling and that advanced units, such as H&P’s FlexRig concept introduced in the late 1990s and now thoroughly proved, are far more efficient than traditional drill packages and could work faster and more flexibly.

Monobore wells have been gaining traction as a cheap “throwaway” option to more conventional well construction, and one company to try them successfully is Tullow Oil.

It has, for example, successfully applied this approach in Bangladesh on Block 9, where two of the three monobores drilled were deemed successful.

Indeed, as an exploration well, the Bangora-1 was “brilliant,” according to Brian King of the UK-listed group’s Asia & West Atlantic business unit.

The Foreign Corrupt Practises Act (FCPA) is arguably the most far-reaching piece of extraterritorial American legislation there has ever been, and it has huge implications for the oil and gas industry, given its global nature.

David Lorello of London law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP warned delegates at the IADC World Drilling 2009 Conference & Exhibition in Dublin on 18 June that this legislation basically impacts everyone in the industry, especially in dealings with foreign countries, whether directly or indirectly.

A/S Norske Shell has completed the drilling of wildcat well 6603/12-1 in 1,376 m of water – the greatest water depth of any discovery made on the Norwegian shelf to date – the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate announced on 19 June.

The well, which encountered a 16-m gas column, is located 150 km northwest of the 6506/6-1 gas discovery (“Victoria”) in the northern Norwegian Sea. Its objective was to prove petroleum in Upper Cretaceous reservoir rocks in a prospect called “Gro.”