By yearend, rig operators in the UK Continental Shelf will have reduced to zero the discharge of their synthetic-based drilling fluid contaminated cuttings.
An important new effort is under way to evaluate enhanced oil recovery through carbon dioxide flooding in the prolific Monterey formation of the San Joaquin basin, southern California.
A combination of propellant and underbalanced tubing-conveyed perforating enhanced the hydraulic fracturing treatment of a well in the foothills of western Alberta.
A very tight project schedule for which all equipment could not be supplied by the targeted start-up date led to a novel stepwise completion of the first natural gas-processing plant in Vietnam.
Despite few changes in market fundamentals since early August lows, oil prices have increased $7-8/bbl, and OPEC's recently proposed output hike has not eased market jitters, says Purvin & Gertz.
The world now glowers at oil. Prices of crude oil and petroleum products have reached unprecedented levels. Heavily taxed European consumers are protesting in various ways. Newspaper headline-writers have rediscovered the phrase "oil crisis."
Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra, launched a 2-year project to inventory and document all depositional centers under Australian marine jurisdiction.
Norway's Statoil AS reported earlier this month that a hot-tap operation completed at the end of August has prepared the Statpipe gas trunkline for tie-in of an export line from its Gullfaks field in the Norwegian North Sea.
Megamajors BP, ExxonMobil Corp., and Royal Dutch/Shell Group have signed separate strategic joint-venture agreements with China's state oil and petrochemical company, Sinopec Corp., to pave the way for their respective expansion plans in the country.
Marathon Oil Co., a unit of USX Corp. unit USX-Marathon Group, Pittsburgh, plans to consolidate parts of its US upstream organization in an effort to cut costs by $75 million/year and provide the company the footing to expand its business globally.
Through the latter half of the 1990s, the UK North Sea offshore industry was eager to hold itself up as a shining example of a forward-looking business that had been streamlined by rigorous, if sometimes painful, cost-reduction practices.
