Business Briefs

Diamond Offshore recently finished the conversion of the Ocean Victory semi submersible to a 4th generation configura tion, capable of operating in 5,000 ft water depths. The rig features such upgrades as new sponsons, a new mooring system, a third mud pump, and a doubled mud volume. The Victory has begun a 3-year + 3 one-year consecutive term options contract with Vastar Resources for work on the King prospect in Mississippi Canyon 755, US Gulf of Mexico. [16,946 bytes]
Dockwise, operators of the largest fleet of semisubmersible heavy-lift vessels in the world, have safely delivered the 133.5-meter high jackup Glomar Labrador I, from Rotterdam to San Sebastian Bay Argentina. However, due to the 5.37-meter protrusion underneath the rig's hull, the spud cans of two of its legs had to remain in the water during the voyage. [12,137 bytes]

Contracts

Western Geophysical has contracted with Service Marine Industries of Louisiana to build a new cable boat for ocean-bottom cable seismic surveys. The boat is scheduled for delivery in November 1998.

Stewart & Stevenson Services will supply four high-pressure turbocompression modules for installation in the Aker Offshore oil and gas production area in the Bay of Campeche. The contract is valued at $70 million.

Pool Energy Services has announced that it has completed the purchase of the Oceandril Ranger jackup from Oceandril for approximately $8.2 million.

Santa Fe International has entered an agreement with Exmar Offshore for the design and development of the Exmar 2500 semisubmersible, which will be equipped to work in up to 2,500 meters water depth. Santa Fe will be involved in design aspects.

Golden Eagle Group has completed an agreement with Noble Drilling to provide freight forwarding, transportation logistics, import clearance, and export packing services for Noble Drilling's worldwide operations.

Aker Offshore Partners is to carry out engineering work on upgrading Odfjell's semisubmersible Deepsea Trym, which has been chartered by Statoil for drilling and well maintenance on the Gullfaks satellites. It will be enhanced to take heavier loads.

Shell Expro has awarded a £20 million, five-year, supply chain alliance contract to Seaforth Maritime, a Brown & Root subsidiary, to serve its offshore installations in the Central and Northern sectors of the North Sea. This covers the management and operation of Shell Expro Altens operations base and Torry Marine Base.

Weatherford Enterra has announced the closing of the sale of the company's American Aero Cranes division which manufactures and services offshore marine cranes.

Cal Dive International has acquired a 374 ft by 104 ft ice class construction vessel with six-point mooring.

Han-Padron Associates has won a contract with Atwood Oceanics to provide engineering services for the upgrade of the semisubmersible Atwood Falcon, located offshore Malaysia to allow drilling services in up to 3,500 ft of water in the Philippines beginning late next year.

British Steel has won a £6.6 million 18-month contract from Scana Ramnas to supply steel for the marine chains which will be used to anchor Norsk Hydro's Troll C and Statoil's ?sgard B floaters.

Global Industries has placed a $20 million contract with Norson to supply a state-of-the-art deepwater reel pipelay system, with a capacity of more than 7,000 tons, for the heavy lift barge Hercules. The system will be designed to store and lay up to 50 miles of 8-inch diameter rigid pipe in water depths up to 2,500 meters, and will be capable of laying 10 miles of 18-inch pipe.

People

OFS, The Faroese Petroleum Administration (Torshaven), has appointed Heralvur Joensen as Director.

Schlumberger has named Larry Hibbard Vice President, Schlumberger Integrated Project Management.

David Bremner has joined the board of Monument Oil and Gas (London) as Exploration Director.

The American Petroleum Institute has named Red Cavaney President and Chief Executive Officer.

Steven Holliday has become responsible for international development of British-Borneo Petroleum Syndicate (London) outside the USA and Northwest Europe.

Diderik Schnitler will become Chief Executive of Saga Petroleum (Oslo) next year, succeeding Asbjorn Larsen.

Western Atlas has announced that Gary E. Jones has been promoted to President, Western Atlas Logging Services and a Corporate Vice President.

Dr. Bernard Person has joined Premier Oil (London) as Portfolio Manager for the company's exploration interests.

Christian Marius has succeeded Dominque Henri as Managing Director of Technip-Geoproduction (Paris).

Alan Aron has become Director of Marketing at Allied Colloids Group (Bradford, UK).

Aker Marine Contractors (Houston) has named Harry Stelly as Marketing Manager for its regional office in Lafayette.

Subsea and pipeline engineering group JP Kenny Caledonia (Aberdeen) has appointed Alan Brackenridge as General Manager, Ian Gardiner as Senior Projects Manager, and Khosro Nekonam as Engineering Supervisor.

Brian Nixon has joined Wood Group Engineering (Aberdeen) as Sales and Marketing director.

GeoQuest has announced the appointment of George C. Steinke to Vice President of Business Development, Franklin D. May to Vice President of Software Products Commercialization and Support, Ron Mobed to Vice President of GeoQuest Asia-Pacific, and Richard Cottarel to Controller.

Texaco China has appointed Samuel Snyder President and Managing Director.

Dennis Wolf has been promoted to President of Composite Structures International of Houston, Texas.

Aker Marine Contractors has named Chuck Minto as Vice President of Anchor Handling Operations, and Phillip Abbott as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development.

Dresser Industries has reported the following corporate changes: Patrick Murray has assumed the responsibility for Dresser-wide strategic initiatives; G. Phillip Tevis will be responsible for global marketing; Robert Menerey will be responsible for Dresser Drilling and Production; A. Jack Stanley will head Dresser Engineering and Construction Group; and Michael Kramer will head Dresser Engineering Equipment Group.

Kourosh Bassiti has become Managing Director of Smith Rea Energy Aberdeen.

Tommy Werlefors is the new Managing Director of Scana Ramnas (Ramnas, Sweden).

David Bailey has been promoted to General Manager of the instrumentation products division of Parker Hannifin (Barnstaple, UK), with Chris Toncheff also promoted to European Sales Manager of this division.

People

Derek Watling is the new Chairman of the BP/Shell-owned pipeline engineering company BPA (Hemel Hempstead, UK).

GHP Exploration has announced that Mark Stevens has been appointed as Vice President - Engineering.

Newpark Resources has named Eric Wingerter Vice President of Corporate Development.

Coastal Corporation has elected Charles Carpenter Senior Vice President for Exploration and Production of Coastal Oil & Gas.

Enterprise Oil has appointed Roger O'Neil as a non-executive director.

Merrick "Buddy" Kerry has been named Manager of Vessel Operations by Oceaneering.

Dalton J. Boutte has been promoted to President of Schlumberger Wireline & Testing North America.

H. Craig Clark has been appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Proenergy.

Bisso Marine has announced that Kelly Steele has been promoted to Vice President of Salvage and Diving, Bob Keller has been promoted to Vice President Heavy Lift and Operations, and Charles LaBiche, III has been promoted to Vice President Acquisitions and Maintenance.

Grady O'Meally has been appointed Executive Manager of the Australian Pipeline Industry Association.

Fredric L. Hettinger has been named Vice-President of Engineering for Sonsub International.

Stupp of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has promoted J.L. Leonard to Senior Vice President, Joseph Caldwell to Vice President Operations, and George Yelverton to Vice President-Quality and Compliance.

JM Clipper has appointed Al Lee as the manager of New Product Development.

Criterion Catalyst has announced that Kirk Novak has been promoted to the position of Managing Director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Robert Osmer has been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Consilium Metritpe.

Larry Rogers has been promoted to the position of Vice President and General Manager of Gilmore Valve.

Mergers, Acquisitions, New Companies

Schlumberger Oilfield Services has signed a letter of intent to acquire the business of S.A. Holditch & Associates, a worldwide engineering consulting company in stimulation, completion engineering, and reservoir analysis.

Halliburton has announced that it has completed the acquisition of NUMAR, a designer, manufacturer, and marketer of well logging equipment.

Apache has entered into an agreement with a subsidiary of Mobil under which Apache will acquire three companies that own an interest in certain oil and gas properties and production facilities offshore Western Australia.

U.S. Filter/Johnson Screens has acquired the Bixby-Zimmer division of W.S. Tyler, a manufacturer of wire products.

Western Atlas has completed the acquisition of Geosignal, a seismic data processing company, and Seismic Resources, a provider of non-exclusive seismic surveys.

Araxas Energy, South Coast Exploration, and Interactive Exploration Solutions, have combined to form XPLOR Energy based in The Woodlands, Texas.

Shrieve Chemical Products and Shell Chemical have announced an alliance to provide the oil industry with synthetic base fluids for use as drilling fluids.

Halliburton has signed a letter of intent with Purolator Products to exclusively provide Purolator's Poroplus sand control screens around the world.

Bo Gray has announced that it has acquired all of the assets of the Premiere Casing division operating in Kilgore, Texas.

Horizon Offshore Contractors has signed a letter of intent with Det Sondenfjelds-Norske Deampskibsselskab (DSND) that would provide DSND a 50% equity position in the company.

LCT and C&C Technologies have formed a joint venture to acquire extensive gravity, magnetic, and multibeam bathymetric data in the deep Gulf of Mexico.

High-Sense Geophysics, a provider of airborne remote sensing services for petroleum exploration, has acquired Aerodat, a subsidiary of Bell Earth Sciences.

Company News

Texas Drydock has changed its name to TDI-Halter and has relocated its Marketing and Business Development office to 1800 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, TX 77027.

Navion will be the name of the new shipping company established this week by Statoil and Rasmussens Rederi of Kristiansand in southern Norway.

Producers Energy Marketing said Pioneer Natural Resources will withdraw as a member of ProEnergy effective Jan. 1, 1998, as a result of the Parker & Parsley Petroleum and Mesa merger.

Geco-Prakla has reported its vessel, Geco Orion, has established a towing record with its initial configuration. The vessel reached the 40,000-meter stream spread with an 800-meter wide spread of 8,000-meter long streamers.

GeoQuest has announced the opening of a comprehensive Data Management Center and Data Management Training Center in Houston that will support the company's new PowerHouse exploration and production data management service.

Gretna Machine & Iron Works and the Halter Marine Group have dedicated their business shipyard to ship repair and conversion.

Dailey Petroleum Services announced that it has approved the change of the company's name to Dailey International.

Stewart & Stevensen has expanded its Petroleum Equipment Division headquarters by constructing a 124,000 sq ft oilwell services equipment facility.

Aker Marine has established an operational support base in Port Fouchon, Louisiana that will provide a storage and staging facility for mooring components and increasing fleet of vehicles.

Halter Marine has re-opened the former Eastern Marine shipyard in Allenton, Florida. The yard is now named Halter Marine Panama City.

Babcock & Wilcox Research and Development Division is now conducting business as McDermott Technology.