Yearly archives: 2019

After 40 years in the UK, I have to admit that no one can do cliches like the Brits. One of my favourites is you wait for a bus and then three come along one after another referring to something long awaited. Then again, a friend of mine and I […]

From Vaasa, Finland: Zoologists often speak about the long gestation periods for elephants, but as we in the oilfield know, it ain’t nothin’ compared with the time required to get a new piece of technology developed, tested and deployed. So it is no surprise it has been six years since […]

When I was editor of Subsea Engineering News, readers often asked how I managed to gather so much information. It was a matter of effort – making contacts, lots of phone calls, endless schmoozing at conferences and generally putting in the time. It wasn’t easy, but why should it have […]

I am excited. OK, I am enthused, just so no one calls out the fire brigade. In the last fortnight, the subsea project market seems to have come alive. Of course, all of the work that was announced was bid three to six months ago, so in essence they are […]

I’m back – sorry to have been gone so long, but holidays are requisite. My wife and I did a two-week touring trip around northwest Spain and northern Portugal in September. This might seem irrelevant to the nature of this blog, but bear with me as there is a link, […]

When I gave the last blog this title, it did not occur to me that I would start stirring up memories, even if mostly very good ones. What I received – a comment available for all to read – was a very heartfelt missive from the estimable Ian Ball. I […]

Offshore Europe 2019 starts next week and as per usual, there are talking points a many, some actually to do with business and others, maybe not. TechnipFMC’s (TFMC) decision to split itself into two entities – a specialist upstream/subsea company and an onshore/midstream/downstream one – will have some scratching their […]

If there is any figure of speech that is overused – not surprisingly! – it is the hyperbole. And so is the oft-used expression ‘the end of an era’, but it truly is as ExxonMobil, or Esso as it used to be called, has reportedly called time on its activities […]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…the UK had offshore oversight authorities that could only remind you of Jaja Binks of Star Wars fame – fairly toothless and incapable of making any sensible judgments. A good deal of blubbering went on. Operators were allowed to abandon fields […]

The announcement this week that the entity created by the merger of drilling contractors Ensco and Rowan Drilling was to be named Valaris made me laugh. Yet another new company name that means absolutely nothing to its customers or to the marketplace in general. I recall going to Aberdeen in […]

After venturing recently somewhat off piste, I thought I would return to the heart of the matter – subsea engineering. It is quite interesting how quickly some technology innovations and ideas have gone from the realm of the Grimm Brothers, ie fairy tales, to mainstream thinking. To wit, Chariot Oil […]

One of the catchphrases of the modern computer-based, digitised world is ‘disruptive technology’ which for those unfamiliar with the term is an innovation that changes the way an industry or even the world in general does something or even the way it thinks. It is difficult to recall an oilfield […]

Few folks outside of the world of hacks know how we go about getting the news that everyone wants to read. Up until the year 2000, everything was copacetic – a lovely word that means absolutely nothing, but infers that all is well. Journalists like me had a Rollodex – […]

I mentioned in a blog or two back that I recently attended a Natural Resources Forum event in London on the future of the UK offshore sector. A most interesting – maybe astounding is the more correct adjective – statement made there was that the UK will be one of […]

OTC has come around again – it begins Monday – which always presents an opportunity for some navel-gazing about the state of the industry or whatever. I have to admit that I rather miss going to Houston – it has been five years now since my last visit – even […]

Here are a few names to conjour with: Ultramar Exploration, Thomson North Sea, Monument Resources, British Borneo Oil & Gas , Union Jack Oil, Westburne Oil, Pict Petroleum and Edinburgh Oil & Gas. These were some of the small, very small and minnow-like companies who were licence holders in earlier […]

I was at the Natural Resources Forum event in London recently which was a ‘talking heads’ on the future of the North Sea. One topic of focus was decommissioning and I was quite surprised to hear one of the speakers talking about ‘monetising’ the value of decommissioning. This seemed not […]

I have never been big on surveys – they are usually meant only to re-affirm what the client already knows or thinks they want to know. One I do rate, though, is a quite well known one done by McKinsey & Co at least 15 years ago about the uptake […]

Hello – I’m back – no, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke. I haven’t ever really been away, but when one’s former organ is now in someone else’s hand, it becomes a bit difficult to maintain the same profile. A long-time reader of the missives from my previous […]