Oil Basin News

Enterprise Products Partners LP said on Wednesday it expects to take about two years to construct its oil export project called Sea Port Oil Terminal, or SPOT, in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.Permitting for the terminal was expected to reach the final stages by the end of the first quarter of 2020 and final approval was expected during the second quarter, a company executive said on its second quarter earnings call.Enterprise Products signed long-term agreements with Chevron Corp to support the development of SPOT…

The first shipment of gas fracked from U.S. shale will arrive in Britain next week, upping pressure on Scotland to reassess its opposition to fracking. Chemicals giant Ineos will be importing ethane, obtained from rocks fractured at high pressure, in a foretaste of larger deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from shale set to reach Europe in 2018. The shipment of ethane, used to make plastics, anti-freeze and detergents, will arrive in Scotland's Firth of Forth on Tuesday, accompanied by a lone Scots piper at sunrise, the company said. The Zurich-headquartered group is against a Scottish moratorium on fracking. It is Britain's biggest shale gas company in terms of acreage and it has promised to share six percent of future shale gas revenue with local residents.

With most offshore wells in Brazil located between 30 and 300 km from the coast, communication with offshore assets has not always been straightforward or reliable. Some operators and service providers still use traditional maritime VSAT services for coverage offshore Brazil, yet the introduction of Microwave radio has led to a much better level of quality and reliability in high-bandwidth voice and data communications. Claudio Paschoa, Maritime Reporter’s correspondent in Brazil had an interesting conversation with Arild Fotland, head of Ceragon’s Oil and Gas Division, about the advantages of Microwave radio communications for offshore operations in Brazil. Fotland joined Ceragon in 1978 and has been stationed all over the world.

William Cho, Head of MatthewsDaniel Weather, a division of the Bureau Veritas Group, explains why improvements in drilling technologies and weather monitoring systems have made offshore shelf drilling operations in the Arctic Circle increasingly attractive to upstream oil and gas companies and their investors. Rising crude oil prices motivate not only technological innovators to explore cheaper alternative energy sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines, but also upstream oil and gas companies to explore new oil reserves which had not otherwise been economical.

Tullow Oil plc announces the successful results from a series of exploration, appraisal and testing activities conducted in Blocks 10BB and 13T onshore Kenya. The Etom-1 well in Block 13T is the most northerly well drilled to date in the South Lokichar basin, 6.5 km north of the previous Agete-1 discovery. The well encountered approximately 10 metres of net oil pay, extending the proven oil basin significantly northwards. Based on this result the ongoing 550 sq km 3D seismic survey in the South Lokichar basin has been extended to cover a further 247sq km in this northern area, including several similar prospects which are scheduled to be drilled in 2015. The Weatherford 804 rig drilled the Etom-1 well to a final depth of 2,000 metres.

In an effort to spread out oil and gas production to other parts of the country and increase overall oil production, Brazil has finally intensified hydrocarbon exploration along its northeastern and northern coasts. These are some of the poorest regions in the country and infrastructure for oil and gas exploration is minimal, yet significant discoveries and seismic indicators of large reservoirs are tantalizing and have attracted major local and foreign investors. Potential for oil discoveries in the area is proven, yet players will be faced by many challenges offshore and on land in order to uncork reservoirs at the Northern Frontier.

As some pre-salt plays begin production, a wide range of subsea infrastructure is being built, with O&G transportation pipeline grids being one of the vital downstream systems. Saipem has been recipient of the first major contracts to install deepwater pre-salt pipelines by national operator Petrobras. Claudio Paschoa, Maritime Reporter’s correspondent in Brazil brings us an in-depth look at Saipem’s vessels and projects in Brazil. Saipem’s pipelaying segment is part of a unified Business Unit Engineering & Construction, an entity with more than 30,000 employees from more than 100 nationalities, with more than 60 permanent establishments and numerous project execution centers worldwide, which has maintained yearly revenues exceeding $13 billion.

An offshore drilling platform, operated for Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras , was partially evacuated after tilting on Friday, but there was no risk of it sinking, the company and the local oil workers' union said on Friday. Crew members were evacuated to another rig after the SS-53 platform, located in the Campos oil basin off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, began to list at about 0100 local time (0400 GMT) Friday, a spokeswoman from the Sindipetro-NF oil workers' union said. The platform had been stabilized and safety measures were being taken, said a Petrobras spokeswoman who declined to give further details. The union spokeswoman also said the rig had been stabilized.