WGP Group has won a deal to provide seismic services to ConocoPhillips. The five-year deal includes WGP acquiring seismic data sets on the Ekofisk field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. WGP is wholly owned subsidiary of Thalassa Holdings.
Charter rates for North Sea supply boats and anchor handlers are now so low that most vessels are sailing at a loss and, in some instances, apparently with “insufficient crew and fuel” aboard.
It means that the companies that own them are in danger of sinking into a mire of debt and default; even going bankrupt or being forced into mergers.
It is claimed there are now so few British seafarers on the ships . . . they are being replaced by cheap, Third World labour . . . that they have become an “endangered species”, according to a leading North Sea trade unionist.
Growth in the economy of the north-east is set to hit reverse as the effects of the plummeting price of oil and gas is starting to “bite”, economists have warned.
North-east MSP Stewart Stevenson has tabled a motion at the Scottish Parliament calling on the UK Government to reverse its decision to cut £1billion of funding for carbon capture and storage projects.
Oil extended losses below $40 a barrel amid speculation a record global glut will be prolonged as OPEC abandoned its long-time strategy of limiting production to control prices.
The Egyptian Government ordered its oil and gas arms to freeze talks on importing Israeli natural gas after an international arbitration court ordered the Arab world’s most populous nation to pay a fine of almost $1.73b to Israel.
The chairman of Spitfire Oil said the junior oil and gas market had been severely, if not mortally wounded by the dramatic fall in the price of hydrocarbons.
Iran joined Saudi Arabia in saying it would keep on pumping despite oil prices hovering near a six-year low, giving the strongest signal yet that OPEC wouldn’t act at the group’s meeting in Vienna to curb the global supply glut.