The boss of the new oil and gas regulator has been revealed as the keynote speaker at the first Press and Journal Gold Awards.
Andy Samuel, chief executive of the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) which is set to usher in a new era of collaboration in the North Sea, said events such as the Gold Awards would help the industry “create a positive future”.
The announcement of the evening’s highlight comes just days before the deadline for submitting entries to the awards comes on Friday.
Mr Samuel said: “I am delighted to be speaking at the Press and Journal Gold Awards in June. At this challenging time for our industry, it has never been more important to recognise and reinforce the positive impact oil and gas companies and their employees have on Aberdeen and the north-east.”
Mikhail Fridman’s LetterOne Group has appointed a former Swedish prime minister as a board adviser.
The Russian Tycoon made the latest high-profile addition as it expands the oil and gas business.
Carl Bildt will take on the role a week after ex-British trade minister Mervyn Davis was names as deputy chairman of LetterOne’s board of directors.
BP, the former state-owned oil company with operations from Russia to Iraq, appointed the retired chief of Britain’s overseas spying network as a board member.
John Sawers was head of the MI6 service until November 2014. He spent 36 years working for the British government in international affairs and security, including in Iraq, Egypt, South Africa and the US, BP said in a statement Thursday. BP is working on the giant Rumaila and Kirkuk deposits in Iraq.
Sawers, who this year spoke of an increased Russian threat to the West, will also help oversee a business that owns a fifth of OAO Rosneft, the Kremlin-controlled company sanctioned by the US and Europe over Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The Trans Nigeria Pipeline that carries Nigeria's Bonny Light crude oil to an export terminal has been shut down since May 12, a Shell spokeswoman said on Thursday.
Up to 90 jobs are under threat at a subsidiary of Aberdeen and Inverness-based Global Energy Group.
Isleburn, which employs more than 600 people at operations in the Granite City and Evanton in Easter Ross, stressed that the potential redundancies may not happen.
A statement from the firm said: “We deeply regret having to take this action which, if required, is likely to commence around the beginning of June.
Statoil and Gazprom have both signed agreements with Centrica to increase the volume of gas they supply to the company under an existing supply agreement.
In 2011, the Statoil signed a 10-year agreement with Centrica for the supply of five billion cubic metres (bcm) per annum to be delivered to the UK from October this year.
The new agreement will increase the volume of gas by a further 2.3bcm per year, taking the total volume to be delivered over the ten-year period to 73bcm.
Ann-Elisabeth Serck-Hanssen, acting senior vice president of marketing and trading in Statoil, said: “We are very happy to have made this agreement with Centrica.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has launched a consultation that will see the watchdog bring in legally enforced safety standards on North Sea helidecks.
Currently an Aberdeen-based body called the Helideck Certification Agency (HCA) oversees inspection and certification services for more than 300 offshore helidecks.
But a review launched by the CAA last year following the fatal crash off Sumburgh saw the watchdog look at ensuring that the safety requirements of landing areas for helicopters were enforced under law, which currently the HCA is not required to do.
The HCA was set up in 1997 by helicopter operators. Last year it was acquired by investors backed by a private equity company, Praesidian Capital Europe. The HCA is now controlled by a firm called Helideck Analytics, set up by former CHC executives, Neil Calvert and David Dobbin.
Tag Oil has appointed a new chief operating officer.
Frank Jacob joins the firm with 35 years' experience in the oil and gas industry where his responsibilities included operation management, corporate acquisitions, and the development of existing oil and gas production.
Rockefeller Hughes has confirmed the resignation of one of its officers.
Gary Lancaster has resigned as General Counsel of the Company for reasons described as "personal".
A protester perched herself on a 15-foot tripod in a bid to block the entrance of a Shell fuel transfer station earlier this week in protest to the oil major’s planned Arctic drilling.
The protest was staged on Seattle’s Harbor Island after the US Department of the Interior gave conditional approval to Shell for it to explore for oil in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska.
The company has not drilled in the region since a mishap in 2012.
Lamprell has confirmed the retirement of its non-executive director.
Peter Whitbread will step down from his post with immediate effect after 18 years with the firm.
Mr Whitbread joined the company in 1992 as an architect before helping to position the organisation into a large offshore contractor.
Learning solutions provider Atlas Knowledge has signed a deal with the Ministry of Oil and Baghdad Oil Training Institute (BOTI) in Iraq.
The contract will enable the firm to deliver safety and technical training to the country’s oil and gas workforce as part of a project sanctioned by the Ministry of Oil’s Department of Training and E-learning.
Statoil has established a unit for renewable energy as its cheif executive makes changes to his management team following his takeover as head of the company.
Eldar Saetre has created the New Energy Solutions business area which will be led by executive vice president Irene Rummelhoff who was formerly head of exploration in Norway.
Hans Jacob Jegge will replace Torgrim Reitan as chief financial officer.
Proposals for how the UK CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) could take on the safety certification and approval of offshore helidecks have been announced as part of a consultation on the area.
It comes after the review of offshore helicopter operations published in February last year highlighted that the CAA’s involvement in an enhanced certification process would raise safety level for more than 300 helidecks in UK waters.
CAA safety and airspace director Mark Swan said: “The oil and gas industry puts considerable effort into maintaining safe helidecks but in cases where a helideck doesn’t meet safety standards there is currently no legal enforcement process to either shut it down or demand improvements.
A partnership initiative which was aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour by offshore workers travelling on trains to and from Europe’s oil capital has been successful.
BTP officers based in Aberdeen have been monitoring the conduct of passengers from the offshore industry arriving and departing from the city’s railway station and their behaviour on the trains they travelled on.
More than 350 train journeys were monitored between Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh as part of the initiative, which began last year.
Amec Foster Wheeler has been awarded a seven-year contract by Fusion For Energy (F4E) for the development and delivery of the Natural Beam Cell Remote Handling System on the ITER fusion reactor in the South of France.
The framework contract, which is worth up to €70million over the next seven years, is the largest nuclear robotics contract awarded by F4E to a UK company.
Clive White, President of Amec Foster Wheeler’s Clean Energy Business said: “This contract demonstrates our leading expertise in nuclear remote handling and robotics.
The chief executive of IGas Enegy has stepped down.
Andrew Austin has resigned from the board and is set to handover to the company's chief financial officer, Stephen Bowler.
The move comes after IGas Energy’s landmark acquisition of Dart Energy was officially completed late last year.
The UK election has delivered an unexpected outcome, with Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron on course to stay in 10 Downing Street with a parliamentary majority.
That’s partly because the Tories defeated Liberal Democrat lawmakers in England. In Scotland, where Ed Miliband’s Labour opposition has been dominant for a generation, the Scottish National Party is set to win nearly all 59 House of Commons seats.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, lost the Twickenham district in southwest London he held since 1997. Tania Mathias, the Tory candidate, overcame a 12,140 majority to defeat Cable in one of the Liberal Democrats’ safest seats.
Plexus Holdings has secured a new £1 million contract with Premier Oil Norge AS.
The contract will enable the Aberdeen-based firm to supply its wellhead technology for an exploration well in Norwegian Central North Sea in August.
Just when India’s biggest oil and gas explorer needs to find new reserves to replace aging wells, it’s running out of money.
“Depleting cash reserves are a serious concern,” Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Chairman Dinesh Kumar Sarraf said in an interview on April 30.
“But that doesn’t stop us from drilling more wells. As a loan-free company, we have lots of options.”
Oil’s 36 percent plunge since June has lowered the valuation of global energy assets, paving the way for takeovers in the sector. State-run ONGC’s $3.3 billion of record cash reserves have all but vanished in the last three years, making it more difficult to compete for acquisitions with rivals such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA that are as much as 14 times its size.
Up to 200 new jobs will be created in the north thanks to a multimillion-pound investment in the Nigg Energy Park.
Owner Global Energy Group said the £20million it spent on a new “finger” jetty and upgrading existing quayside facilities were key to it landing a contract for maintenance and upgrades on Diamond Offshore’s Ocean Guardian drilling rig.
The company said other potentially lucrative oil and gas industry work was also in the pipeline.
Inverness Chamber of Commerce said it was “a great piece of news” for the energy industry supply chain in and around the Cromarty Firth.
Chesaspeake Energy has appointed a new executive vice president of exploration, land and subsurface technology.
Frank Patterson joins the US-based oil and natural gas firm with more than 30 years' experience in the industry.
Energy services firm Proserv has completed the first phase of one of its biggest contracts.
The Aberdeen-quartered company has delivered three of nine control systems that will support drill pipe riser (DPR) intervention services at depths of 2,500 metres.
The chief executive of BG Group said he welcomed the takeover bid by oil major Shell with "mixed emotions".
The deal, was announced just months after former Statoil boss Helge Lund, took up his new role.
Lund said there was still work to be done before the deal would be finalised.
