Wednesday 23 September 2009

US Drilling

I can't remember if and when I have mentioned this before, but it does seem that pressure is building on Barrack Obama to make some kind of decision on Offshore Drilling, it seems that various states are all pressuring him to do so, whilst Green and Conservation campaigners are saying no. Either way he's in a bit of trouble, as they need the money, but not the bad publicity. I wonder how he'll get out of it?

Article which is more pro-offshore is here from Reuters, and for the other side here.

The Kan Tan IV Semi is off to Australia after a few Crane problems. It's a good long contract, about 2 years minimum. I have a soft spot for this rig as I placed my first offshore guy on it.

Finally, I found this this list of every rig on order. It's a useful document... If anyone can tell me what the story is with Desarollo, I would be very greatful.

Jobs wise (email me if you are interested) I'm looking for:

American DPOs for GOM, Must have Master's Certificates
South East Asian candidates for Jack up - I need a Materialsman and a Mechanic. Rates are around $130 - $150US per day. + bonus.
Subsea Engineers for Brazil - must have operational rig based experience.

Have a good week.

Thursday 17 September 2009

Deepwater still in demand

This Outlines a few interesting points, particularly that the Russians will need help from outside to access their offshore reserves, which might mellow out the often difficult relationship between Russia and other countries when it comes to Energy policy. Here is another article which outlines exactly that.

Also, Greenaland is mentioned a few times which is a good tip. I may be wrong, but I think Greenland, Iceland and around Svalbard will be the next new fields to be explored.

This Rigzone article about Mexico also caught my eye. The Tiber find has obviously got the Mexicans back into thinking about increasing their exploration, perhaps in partnership with Petrobras for the deepwater work. Again, more international collaboration.

Which brings us to Petrobras, busy as ever. They stated that they will build or hire 28 new deepwater rigs in coming years. Article here. But they are also having Rig Charterers build the other rigs in Brazil. Sensible from Brazil's point of view as this will encourage investment and bring money in. Probably isn't great news for the guys at Keppel FELS, Korea and elsewhere though. Also, where will they get the staff? Hopefully from me...

Jobs this week:

Senior DPO, must be US citizen, for New Build Semi in Gulf of Mexico.
2nd Engineer Vacancy is back, PSV, North Sea. Need to be resident in the UK.
Subsea Engineers for Brazil, MUX experience needed.

Monday 14 September 2009

Offshore Europe

Offshore Europe was pretty busy, there were a lot of interesting stalls and stands, and I got the chance to meet a few people too. I also went to the lecture on Maintaining and attracting talent for the UK sector - the Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy was there. (He's the Labour representative in Scotland.) I have to say, I wasn't too impressed - he didn't really have the confidence or the quick thinking you would expect from a member of the Cabinet, but then I guess Scotland is pretty much a lost cause to the UK government these days anyway.

But enough of that. The lecture was interesting, Bob Fryer from Shell E&P was there, and he had a good overview of the international nature of the market we are in, as was the next speaker, Stephanie Brouwer of Halliburton. Prof Alistair Oag was next, and was the best speaker, he works for a big University now, and was more talking about the Graduate side, and David Doig from OPITO was the last one up. The 2 UK guys struck me as being a lot less aware of how international the market is now. There seems to be a bit of a culture of protectionism when it comes to our skillsets; trying to keep them in the UK. But the fact is most offshore guys don't want to work in the UK because of the taxes, so they would probably be better off attracting international talent!

The stalls were pretty good, Taqa had decided to just have a coffe bar, and a few of the Marine companies had free bars, which was popular. I can't list everyone who was there. If you're interested go to their website.

One final thing, an interesting point came up when I was talking to a potential client in Aberdeen with regard to temp work. They said that they prefer to use the Aberdeen agencies as they "knew the candidates better". I just wondered if any of you had good or bad experiences with your Aberdonian agencies, and if you did, please email me, or leave a comment.

The blog will be back to normal later in the week.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Hotels and Climate change

What a week! The build up to Offshore Europe in Aberdeen continues (I will be there tomorrow, the 9th, if anyone wants to meet up, feel free to email me)

This article asks quite an important question, what are Brazil and China doing about climate change? Well... not much, although I think you could argue that in order to build all of the wind farms, turbines, etc, is going to take a lot of oil, petrol and various other materials from the oil industry. It also gives a good run down of how busy the 2 countries have been.

The big news of the past week has been this massive BP find in the Gulf of Mexico at the Tiber well. It's sparked a whole storm of commentary on both sides of the fence about whether America should be drilling offshore, and if they don't, someone else will.

On a slightly lighter note, there was an architect who was planning to make Oil Rigs into hotels and Casinos. Link here. I don't imagine that this is the safest idea in the world, but maybe that's just me...

I got that link as I was reading this interesting article about Decommisioning. By all accounts, this is the most boring kind of work possible, but I reckon it'll be a big industry fairly soon.

Jobs this week have changed, it's looking likely that I will be needing some senior staff for a newly built drilling rig in China.

At the moment I need Senior DPOs with Semi sub or Drillship experience, and Barge Engineers with similar. As usual, emails to mb.oilblog@gmail.com

Take it easy, and there'll be a report on Offshore Europe soon.