Noble Corp completes acquisition of Pacific Drilling
Noble Corp has completed its acquisition of Pacific Drilling, effective 15 April. The agreement for the two companies to combine in an all-stock transaction had been announced on 25 March.
Robert Eifler, Noble President and CEO, said, “This is an important step for Noble as we continue to strengthen our fleet and focus on delivering safe and efficient services to our global customers.”
Noble expects to realize annual pre-tax cost synergies of at least $30 million. Additionally, it will move to dispose of the Pacific Bora and Pacific Mistral drillships.
The acquisition is expected to enhance Noble’s position in the ultra-deepwater market, solidify its relationship with key customers, facilitate re-entry into both the West African and Mexican regions, and strengthen its presence in the US Gulf of Mexico.
Tenaris prepares Texas facility for activity ramp-up
Tenaris is scaling up industrial activity at its Conroe, Texas, plant, adding approximately 140 employees. Crews are being added to operate the heat treatment and finishing areas of the facility. Pipes undergo heat treatment to obtain defined metallurgical properties and are then finished, which is the last part of the manufacturing process, consisting of threading, stenciling, inspections and final rounds of testing.
A $600,000 investment is also under way to equip the plant with tracking and traceability capabilities, which form part of Tenaris’ direct mill-to-rig commercial model, Rig Direct. With the technology implemented, Conroe will have the capability to offer RunReady services.
Expro, FTAI Ocean form well intervention alliance
Expro Group has formed an exclusive alliance with global vessel provider FTAI Ocean, a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors. The agreement calls for the supply of the DP3 M/V Pride well intervention vessel to provide full light well intervention services to the subsea oil and gas sector.
The alliance creates a full service offering for the riserless and riser-based well intervention and P&A markets.
Reelwell to supply DualLink wired drill pipe to Nabors
Reelwell has accepted purchase orders from Nabors Industries for the delivery of two strings of DualLink wired drill pipe for US land applications. The commercial order follows Reelwell’s successful customer demonstration of the technology in September last year. During the demonstration, DualLink performed without failure for over 80 hours, with 100% uptime reliability of telemetry and power transmission.
FET partners with Deepsea Technologies in Brazil
Forum Energy Technologies (FET) has entered a partnership for Deepsea Technologies Equipamentos Industriais to represent its operations in Brazil. Deepsea Technologies will provide business development and engineering support on behalf of FET in Brazil. It will also deliver full servicing, repair, calibration, upgrades and modifications for FET remotely operated vehicles and associated tooling.
Kosmos announces new exploration leadership
Kosmos Energy announced that Tim Nicholson has been promoted to Senior Vice President and Head of Exploration, and John Shinol has been promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Geoscientist. Both men joined Kosmos in 2018 and were formerly at Cobalt International Energy. Tracey Henderson, Kosmos’ previous SVP of Exploration, recently joined APA Corp as Senior Vice President, Exploration.
Ashtead, OAP complete project offshore Angola
A partnership between Ashtead Technology and Ocean Atlantic Petroleum (OAP) has executed its first marine services project in West Africa and received award for further work. Leveraging joint capabilities, Ashtead completed a multi-asset, Class-approved mooring inspection campaign for Total E&P Angola in the Girassol and Dalia fields, and has been awarded further work on the Pazflor and CLOV fields.
The underwater inspection scope, which will avoid the need for drydocking, combines Ashtead’s visual inspection, chain-cleaning, measurement and 3D modeling technologies with OAP’s offshore technical personnel.
Energy recruitment specialists join forces
Drillmar Resources has signed a memorandum of understanding with JAB Recruitment to create DRILLJAB, a joint project to provide staffing solutions to the drilling contractor sector across the Americas.
The joint venture will enable Drillmar to extend its global footprint to the United States, Canada, Mexico and South America, while JAB Recruitment will expand its service capability in the region with further drilling expertise.
Dynamic Cloud to represent FutureOn in Saudi Arabia
Software company FutureOn has appointed Dynamic Cloud as its representative in Saudi Arabia and Andreas Gaarder as Vice President of EMEA. Mr Gaarder will lead the company’s growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
PRODUCTS
Infostat rolls out IADC DDR Plus as part of RIMDrill system
Infostat Systems has announced that the newest release of the RIMDrill rig reporting and business analysis system will include the new IADC DDR Plus version of the venerable IADC report.
The previous version of the report has served the industry well for over 50 years and now reflects the changing reporting requirements necessary for the technology advances experienced by the industry. Infostat is seeing an increase in interest within the drilling contractor community for analytical tools to better illustrate critical aspects of asset performance, according to its VP of Product Development Brian Pedersen.
Innovations in the updated version include the additional granularity of the enhanced operations coding scheme, the potential to support automated report data feeds from “rig state” systems and the ability to create a digital version in XML format using the WITSML data exchange standard. These assist Infostat’s continuing development of its RIMDrill family of rig reporting software applications and RIMDrill Vista dashboard and data analytics services, providing decision-making information to management teams while continuing to streamline and automate the data entry process for rig personnel.
New flexible pipe solution addresses cracking in high CO2 content fields
Baker Hughes has introduced a solution to overcome flexible pipe stress corrosion cracking tendencies in high CO2 content fields, such as those found in Brazil’s pre-salt offshore developments.
Lloyd’s Register issued Baker Hughes a design appraisal document (DAD) certification, validating the company’s flexible pipe testing program and results. This follows an extensive three-year testing campaign featuring more than 120 test setups, methodologies and characterizations. The certification verifies that, on top of the standard 25-30 year equipment service life, Baker Hughes can extend flexible pipes’ contracted service life by at least 50%, with the potential of 2.5x life extension.
In 2017, the Brazil National Petroleum Agency issued a failure mode alert when it found that flexible pipes used in high-CO2 content fields had caused broken tensile armor wires on a flexible pipe installation. Moving forward, all installed flexible pipes by Baker Hughes in Brazil will be covered by the DAD.
DNV issues 3D printing service specification
DNV has released a new service specification document, DNVGL-SE-0568, with the aim to support stakeholders across the additive manufacturing (AM) value chain to ensure AM products, assets and systems are safe and efficient. The specification can support the global oil and gas and other energy industries to adopt AM technology for gaining cost and efficiency benefits while maintaining safety.
Advanced metal alloy enables new completions technology
Halliburton has introduced the Ovidius isolation system, a new packer that transforms from an engineered metal alloy into a rock-like material when it reacts with downhole fluids, creating a long-lasting seal for improved well integrity.
Operators can deploy the system in wellbore isolation applications, where it will provide the traditional benefits of expanding elastomers with new capabilities to withstand differential pressures and extreme temperatures. The technology can be used for cased-hole or open-hole wellbore isolation, and permanent plug and abandonment operations. Additional applications will include geothermal and multilaterals, expanding the window of opportunities for operators worldwide.
ABS brings NASA’s testing technology to offshore assets
ABS Consulting has signed an exclusive global licensing agreement to offer an ultrasonic nondestructive testing solution that supports expanded use of composite materials on offshore assets to extend service life.
Developed to test the heat shield on the Orion space capsule, this is the first proven nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technology that can successfully scan layered composite material for defects.
The technology, developed by The Aerospace Corp for NASA, will assist the offshore industry with corrosion repair and enhance mitigation strategies to support the structural integrity of new and aging assets. Previously, owners and operators were limited to temporary non-structural composite patch repair systems because there was no accurate way to test for defects. Now, composites can replace traditional steel repairs.
