Beginning April 1, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) is increasing physical inspection time offshore, while reducing taxpayer burden by nearly $20 million over 3.5 years, providing significant cost-savings to the American public. Exploring ways to make inspections more efficient and reduce helicopter operating expenses, a team of BSEE leaders in the Gulf of Mexico Region developed the new approach.

Statoil and its partners have decided to invest just over NOK 5 billion in the further development of the Snøhvit field in the Barents Sea, which will provide feedstock for the LNG plant at Melkøya in Hammerfest.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has released the panel investigation report on the May 11, 2016 subsea jumper leak on a platform operated by Shell Offshore, Inc.

Energean Oil & Gas announced that Energean Israel has signed a secured Senior Credit Facility (the Facility Agreement) of up to US$1.275 billion with Morgan Stanley, Natixis, Bank Hapoalim and Societe Generale as Mandated Lead Arrangers (MLAs).

Eni and Sonangol have started oil production from the Ochigufu project, in Block 15/06 of Angola’s deep offshore. The field will add 25,000 barrels to the current production levels.

McDermott International, Inc. (NYSE:MDR) and Baker Hughes, a GE company (NYSE:BHGE) have announced the selection of front-end engineering design (FEED) studies in advance of a substantial* engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract for BP’s Tortue/Ahmeyim Field Development, a major gas project located on the maritime border of Mauritania and Senegal.

An integrated operations support center and a drilling operations center will help reach Statoil’s ambition of increasing value creation from operated fields in Norway by more than 2 billion USD from 2020 to 2025 before tax.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has announced a series of new initiatives to strengthen the federal offshore oil and gas inspection program. Zinke highlighted a risk-based inspection element and an increase in the amount of time allotted for physical inspection of offshore facilities as two of six initiatives that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) will institute before mid-2018.

Total has signed two new 40-year concession agreements with the Supreme Petroleum Council of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). In the frame of these agreements, Total is granted a 20% participating interest in the new Umm Shaif & Nasr concession and 5% in the Lower Zakum concession, effective March 9th, 2018, for a total participation fee of 1.45 billion dollars, which represents an access cost of around 1 dollar per barrel of reserves.

BMT has completed an upgrade of Single Point Mooring (SPM) Telemetry and Control Systems (SPM-TCS) for Terminales Marítimas Patagónicas S.A. (Termap).

The Oil & Gas Technology Centre has invested in three robotics projects to transform pressure vessel inspection, which costs the industry hundreds of millions each year and poses significant safety challenges.

Petronas’ subsidiary, PC Gabon Upstream S.A. (PCGUSA) announced new oil and gas discovery from its Boudji-1 exploration well in Block F14 (Likuale), located in South Gabon.

Subsea 7 S.A. has announced the award of a substantial(1) contract by BP Exploration for the provision of subsea inspection, repair and maintenance (IRM) services on both the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shah Deniz (SD) fields, offshore Azerbaijan.

Africa Energy Corp. announced both the renewal of Petroleum Exploration License 37 (PEL 37) offshore the Republic of Namibia and the signing of a rig contract.

BP has awarded Kongsberg Digital a milestone contract to design, engineer, build, install, and perform acceptance testing of a sophisticated digital twin. In this case, it is a custom-built multi-purpose dynamic simulator (MPDS) for the Mad Dog Phase 2 project in the Gulf of Mexico.

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: APC) has announced it has received official approval from the Government of Mozambique for the Golfinho/Atum Field Development Plan. The Development Plan outlines the integrated onshore project from the reservoir to the LNG market and is a culmination of the substantial progress made to date on the technical and commercial aspects of the Anadarko-operated Mozambique LNG development.