Woodside and BHP have agreed that the Perth-headquartered independent will be operator of the Scarborough gas field. The deal comes in the wake of Woodside securing a 75% stake in the offshore field, located northwest Australia, when it acquired ExxonMobil’s 50% interest in WA-1-R and the Scarborough Joint Venture Agreement. Completion of the transaction has been targeted for the end of March. In a market update to the ASX, Woodside said BHP had waived its pre-emption rights and given consent to the US$744million transaction between Woodside and BHP.
Company Updates
Stalled oil and gas exploration is a major economic risk
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) exploration data confirms that the slump in petroleum exploration in Australia continues.
“Yesterday, the ABS released data for 2017, confirming that exploration in Australia is stalled. Exploration expenditure is well below trend, especially in offshore basins, said APPEA Chief Executive Dr Malcolm Roberts.
“Falling exploration activity has been evident for many years but the latest offshore expenditure numbers are alarming,” he said.
“Offshore activity has fallen to its lowest level since 2004. Other sources show that only five exploration and appraisal wells were drilled offshore in 2017.
“This situation is happening despite deep cost-cutting by the industry.
Revolutionary ‘Offset Installation Equipment’ for well-capping officially launched in Italy
Oil Spill Response Limited’s (OSRL) latest development in subsea well capping technology, Offset Installation Equipment (OIE), was officially launched today from the equipment’s new home base in Trieste, Italy. The well-attended event, which featured key figures from across the offshore industry, represented the culmination of six years’ work between members of the Subsea Well Response Project (SWRP), OSRL and leading oil and gas engineering specialists, Saipem.
Sercel Sells a Sentinel HR High-Resolution Streamer System to German AWI Research Institute
CGG announced today that Sercel has sold one of its new Sentinel HR high-resolution solid streamers to the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), a German research foundation specializing in polar and marine research in the Arctic and Antarctic. AWI will use the Sentinel HR on research projects it is conducting to record critical data about the relationship between geological activity and ecosystems in order to gain a better understanding of the Earth’s system. CGG said that Sentinel HR, launched in 2017, was the latest member of Sercel’s Sentinel solid streamer family. "With a close channel separation of 3.
Bass swimming in onshore oil in Indonesia
Australia’s Bass Oil Limited has announced a major upgrade to the prospectivity of its producing Tangai-Sukananti KSO, located in onshore Sumatra, Indonesia. Highlights of the upgrade, resulting from an independent review of the company’s stake in the KSO located in the prolific oil production province in southern Sumatra, include an additional 1.6 million barrels (0.893 million barrels net to Bass) of low-cost, unrisked, prospective oil resources, in two new near-field targets. As a result of the study’s findings, Bass immediately added these new targets to its planned 2018/2019 drilling program.
Carnarvon’s Buffalo Project
Perth based junior oil and gas company Carnarvon Petroleum has been working with seismic reprocessing firm, DownUnder Geosolutions to provide an update on Carnarvon's Buffalo project. Quality new seismic data has recently been received showing clear definition around the Elang formation, the producing reservoir in the Buffalo oil field. With this new data the reservoir in this region is clearly identifiable on seismic and has been reconciled with important well data within the oil field.
H2Oil & Gas delivers produced water treatment package for plant in Malaysia
H2Oil & Gas, an Aquarion Group company, has completed a contract to design and supply equipment for a produced water treatment plant in Malaysia. The high pressure (117 bar) system reduces the oil in water content from 3000ppm down to <20ppm with an optimized process design that uses the existing gas in the system, eliminating the use of additional fuel gas used on standard Compact Flotation Units. This design, together with a carefully developed layout, produced a low weight compact skid for use on an offshore module that was at a critical weight limit.
CGG GeoConsulting and Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica Announce First Reported Discovery of Live Oil Onshore Jamaica
CGG GeoConsulting and the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) have announced the discovery of two independent live oil seeps from different parts of the island of Jamaica. This significant find marks the first documented occurrence of ‘live’, or flowing, oil from onshore Jamaica and will be of particular interest to oil explorationists focused on Central America and the Caribbean. The oil seeps were found during fieldwork for a recently completed multi-client Robertson Study (Red Book) of the petroleum potential of on- and offshore Jamaica entitled ‘Petroleum Geological Evaluation of Jamaica’ made jointly by CGG GeoConsulting and PCJ.
Po Valley upgrades maiden 2P reserves to 36.5 bcf for Teodorico.
Po Valley Energy has upgraded its oil and gas reserves and resources for its 100% owned subsidiary Po Valley Operations, with maiden 2P reserves of 36.5 bcf of gas now declared at the company’s offshore Adriatic development Teodorico gas field. Teodorico has the largest gas in place of all of Po Valley’s gas fields and is at an advanced stage of assessment and is ready for development. The company received a preliminary award of the Teodorico Production Concession last year and is advanced in securing environmental approval which is the critical step before the full grant of the production concession.
New CGG GeoSoftware Technology ‘Drives Greater E&P Efficiency’
CGG GeoSoftware has announced new releases across its entire geoscience portfolio. Its complementary HampsonRussell, Jason, PowerLog, InsightEarth, VelPro, and EarthModel FT solutions are the industry’s preferred set of tools and support for multi-disciplinary teamwork at every stage from exploration and development to life-of-field production management. In a media release CGG said recent developments “bring exciting new capabilities within each individual solution while offering increasingly integrated workflows from geology and geophysics to reservoir engineering.