Highlights of the Week

Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (January 12 – January 18).

GE Oil & Gas and McDermott International have launched io oil & gas consulting, a new independent venture to transform the development of front-end solutions for offshore fields.

io aims to deliver greater certainty into the design and planning of the offshore oil and gas field and overhaul the current operator-contractor relationship.

Effective 1 January 2015 DeepOcean has organised in two main regions, the Greater North Sea (“GNS”) region and the International region.

Ottar Mæland will head up the GNS region as Group EVP GNS. Group support functions such as IT, Procurement, Asset Management, Ship Management and Engineering will reside in the GNS organisation. Mads Bårdsen will lead activities in the rest of the world including operating regions (Asia Middle East, Brazil, Africa and Gulf of Mexico) as the Group EVP International. Mads and Ottar will report to Bart Heijermans, DeepOcean’s CEO.

Oceaneering has entered into a two-year, multi-service vessel charter agreement with Shell for use of the Ocean Alliance in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM) starting January 1, 2015.

The Ocean Alliance is a U.S. flagged vessel built in 2010. It has an overall length of approximately 94 meters, a Class 2 dynamic positioning system, accommodations for 69 personnel, a helideck, a 150-ton active heave compensated crane, and a working moonpool. The vessel is outfitted with two Oceaneering work class remotely operated vehicles and is equipped with a satellite communications system capable of transmitting streaming video for real-time work observation by shore personnel.

A fourth ship will join the underwater search for a Malaysia Airlines plane, 10 months after it disappeared off the west coast of Australia, an official said on Monday.

According to latest reports, the vessel Fugro Supporter was on its way to the search area after conducting trials off the Indonesian island of Bali, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.

The M.V. Fugro Supporter is a multipurpose survey vessel operated by Fugro Pelagos, Inc., and based out of Singapore. The vessel primarily specializes in cable route surveys and is fitted with geophysical and geotechnical equipment.

A selection of the country’s most innovative, dynamic and successful subsea businesses have made it on to the final shortlist for the annual Subsea UK Awards.

Fisher Offshore, Proserv and ROVOP are all in contention for the evening’s top honour, the subsea company of the year award.

Express Engineering Oil & Gas, Flowline Specialists and Tekmar Energy have been short-listed in the Global Exports Award category, with ToolTec, Ocean Installer and Cambla vying for the New Enterprise award.