Noble Corporation announced that the company and certain subsidiaries of Royal Dutch Shell have agreed to amend the existing long-term contracts on three ultra-deepwater drillships. In the current, challenging environment for offshore exploration and production projects, the agreements offer benefits for both parties.

Commonly used methods of risk assessment, like bowtie diagrams, are static and don’t reflect operational realities. A dynamic risk management approach integrates real-time data from multiple sources including operators, contractors and third parties working on a drilling rig...

Tenaris inaugurated its new service center in Midland, TX, on 5 December 2016 – an investment critical to the deployment of Rig Direct, the company’s new business model of working directly with oil and gas customers to synchronize pipe manufacturing with drilling operations.

Frigstad Deepwater Holding, a subsidiary of Frigstad Offshore Group, has decided to sell all of its shares in Frigstad Deepwater to a subsidiary of China International Maritime Containers Group (CIMC) with effect from 6 December 2016. Frigstad Deepwater, which has been jointly owned by Frigstad Offshore Group and CIMC since 2012, has two 7th generation ultra-deepwater drilling units of the Frigstad D90 design under construction at the Yantai CIMC Raffles shipyard in Shandong, China. The units, Frigstad Shekou and Frigstad Kristiansand, are scheduled for delivery in Q1‐2017 and Q3‐2017 respectively.

Standard drilling float valves have allowed fluid flow to move across the sealing surface of wells, which can compromise the integrity of the sealing surface after prolonged use. To address this challenge Drilling Innovative Solutions launched the Sentinel Drilling Safety Float Valve. The new piece of drilling float equipment uses a flapper actuated ball valve technology to flow fluid through the flow tube without exposing it to the sealing surface. Watch the video with Sam Hawkins, Founder and Manager of New Products for Drilling Innovative Solutions to learn more.

Predictive maintenance has the potential to help drilling contractors better understand when equipment needs critical maintenance in order to prevent unexpected failure. Avoiding unexpected equipment failure is critical to reducing safety incidents, as well as nonproductive time. Watch DC’s video with SparkCognition VP Solutions Philippe Herve from 16 November to learn about new technologies such as cognitive analytics and machine learning that can help the drilling industry implement predictive maintenance. Mr Herve also gave a presentation on predictive maintenance at the Spark Tank forum, held by the IADC ART Future Technology Subcommittee on 27 October in Houston. Before specializing in predictive analytics, he spent 30 years working for oilfield service companies.

BP has sanctioned the Mad Dog Phase 2 project in the United States, highlighting its long term commitment to the country despite the current low oil price environment.

Integration Alliance announced the industry’s first deepwater integrated subsea engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning (EPCIC) multiphase boosting system award. This award, by Murphy Exploration & Production Company–USA, a subsidiary of Murphy Oil Corporation, is for the industry’s longest deepwater subsea multiphase boosting tieback.

BP announced that drilling has commenced on a potential carboniferous gas play in southern North Sea block 43/26a that, if successful, could open up a new phase of development in the region.

OPEC recently agreed on a new production target of 32.5 million bbl/day, in order to accelerate the ongoing drawdown of the stock overhang and bring the oil market rebalancing forward. The decision was made at the 171st Meeting of the Conference of OPEC countries...