People
Dr. Ian Hudson has joined Transocean as corporate environmental advisor, reporting to Jimmy Moore, director of QHSE Services, and Adrian Rose, VP of QHSE. Before joining the company, Hudson headed the Serpent project, a worldwide scientific collaboration with the energy industry. Hudson will continue to chair the Serpent project Advisory Panel, and serve on a number of industry and scientific committees.
Knight Well Services, a division of Knight Oil Tools, has namedBobby Crockett as general manager and Randy Gibson as operations manager. Crockett will oversee all day-to-day operations for Well Services while based at Knight’s new corporate facility near Lafayette, Louisiana.
Gibson will be based in Knight Well Services’ new facility in Houma, Louisiana, and will oversee all Well Services operations and personnel at the facility. He will also supervise the daily operations for all field jobs.
Forrest Singletary, founder and CEO of Offshore Consultants Inc. is retiring after 30 years with OCI. Hank Fuselier, president, and Misty Sonnier, VP, have assumed management of the company as of Aug. 1.
Superior Offshore International has namedGerard Ledet as its new marine technical manager. Ledet will serve as the fleet-wide liaison for all of Superior Offshore International’s marine superintendents, port engineers, and project managers regarding all technical related issues concerning the company’s marine assets.
David L. Stover has been appointed executive VP and COO of Noble Energy Inc. Stover is responsible for all of Noble Energy’s EXP activities. Noble has also appointed Rodney D. Cook and Ted D. Brown as VPs. Cook is responsible for operations in the southern region of North America and is based in Houston. Brown is responsible for operations in the northern region of North America and is based in Denver.
Ross W. Gallup has joined Noble Corp., a provider of drilling-related products and services, as VP of Tax at Noble Drilling Services Inc. Gallup recently served as tax director at Pride International Inc. He has also served as manager of tax at Reading & Bates Inc. and senior tax analyst at KPMG.
Companies
Teledyne Technologies Inc., through subsidiary Teledyne Instruments Inc., has agreed to acquire a majority interest in Ocean Design Inc. for $30 million. ODI is a manufacturer of subsea, wet-mateable electrical and fiber-optic interconnect systems used in offshore oil and gas production, oceanographic research, and military applications.
Expro International Group Plc has completed its acquisition of PowerWell Services, a supplier of well testing and other flow management products and services, for $674.5 million. The acquisition will enable Expro to accelerate its growth and enhance its international footprint through the combination of well testing and related services business, the company said.
Total has chosenEmerson Process Management as main automation contractor for Total’s FPSO vessel for the Akpo field development. The Akpo field is located 200 km off the coast of Nigeria in water depths of 1,100-1,700 m. The Akpo FPSO is 310 m long and 61 m wide, and will process and store oil for delivery to tankers or via pipelines to refineries. Its hull will be equipped to store 2 MMbbl of oil, and to produce 225,000 b/d of oil. The FPSO is scheduled to start-up in 3Q08. Emerson’s responsibilities as main automation contractor include development, installation, configuration, testing, and commissioning of the systems controlling the vessel’s topsides, hull, subsea, and radar tank gauging. In addition, Emerson will be responsible for integrating the safety system. Emerson collaborated on the FEED study and proposed a phased delivery of automation equipment. Initial phases were used to validate the design.
M-I Swaco has acquired Specialised Petroleum Services Group Ltd. (SPS). SPS International offers a line of patented clean-up tool technology as well as its WELLBORE ASSURANCE process. The company’s products and services are designed to minimize damage to the reservoir face and to deliver a clean, unobstructed wellbore for maximized completion efficiency. The operations will be joined under the newly formed wellbore assurance and productivity business unit.
Sondex Plc has formed a new company, Sondex Drilling Tools Inc., to market its measurement while drilling (MWD) and logging while drilling (LWD) instruments. The move follows the recent acquisition of Bluestar Tools, a Canadian-based business specializing in the design, manufacture, and supply of instrumentation and tools for drilling operations. Bluestar’s tools are complementary to the MWD and LWD tools supplied worldwide by Geolink which was acquired by Sondex in June 2004. The suite of Geolink and Bluestar tools are being integrated under the newly created Sondex Drilling Tools Inc. to provide a wider range of options for customers of Sondex’s drilling division.
Peter Brotherhood, a designer and manufacturer of steam turbine driven generator sets for FPSO vessels, has secured two orders from Single Buoy Moorings (SBM). Peter Brotherhood will design and manufacture two condensing steam turbine driven generator sets for FPSO vessels moored off the coast of West Africa. The two turbo-generator sets will generate 12 MW and 14 MW of power from steam raised by a central boiler. They will be built to American Bureau of Shipping standards and delivered to the end users, SBM and Exxon, in December 2006 and March 2007.
IHS Inc. and Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium Inc. (POSC) have signed a letter of intent to establish a service to provide a global industry standard for unique well identifiers for all known oil and gas wells. Since no global definition of what represents a well exists and there are more than 4 million wells known to exist globally, oil companies, service companies, governments, and regulatory agencies differ in their practices and naming conventions. The new IHS/POSC service will provide a common method to address these challenges. Through the service, IHS will continue to generate standard identifiers for all new and unique wells, deliver a complete Master Well Index file to customers comprised of the unique well identifiers and supporting attributes for reference and matching purposes, and provide a well-matching service to the industry by delivering a set of unique well identifiers from the Master Well Index against well data supplied by any industry organization.
