AGR Enhanced Drilling Names New VP Europe

Offshore technology provider AGR Enhanced Drilling appoints Svein Steen to the team as Vice President Europe.

Svein will head-up the Norwegian firm’s presence in Europe from 1st October 2013 and will be based at the company’s head office in Straume. He brings a wealth of experience to Enhanced Drilling, the company best known for its Riserless Mud Recovery system (RMR®) and EC-Drill® Managed Pressure Drilling system, from his 30-year career in the oil industry.

Prior to joining Enhanced Drilling, Svein worked at Baker Hughes for 22 years, most recently in Houston as Director of New Product Commecialisation, Drilling and Evaluation. Before that Svein, who is Norwegian, was the company’s Global Product Line Manager for Advanced Drilling Systems.

His track record with Baker Hughes also includes five-years as Operations Manager in the Norwegian North Sea as well as drilling co-ordination and directional drilling experience on several major international projects, including complex well profiles and Extended Reach Drilling (ERD).

Enhanced Drilling’s Executive Vice President, David Hine, said: “It is a pleasure to welcome someone of Svein’s calibre to the company. His experience of new technology, plus first-hand knowledge of drilling, particularly ERD and the inherent challenge of managing down-hole pressure, will be invaluable to our business moving forward.

“It’s crucial that our customers can draw upon extensive knowledge and competency with respect to drilling and all our regional Vice Presidents can all provide this.”

Enhanced Drilling recently strengthened its leadership team with two other regional VP appointments – Chris French as VP APAC (Asia Pacific), plus Ruud van der Meer as VP ACIS (Africa, Commonwealth of Independent States). Chris is close to completing an MSc in Drilling and Well Engineering and writing a thesis on Dual Gradient Drilling, while Ruud has enjoyed a 30 year career in the oil industry so far, and has extensive drilling experience including Managed Pressure Drilling.

In July it was announced that Enhanced Drilling, via its subsidiary Ocean Riser Systems, had entered into a NOK120m (USD20m) Letter of Intent with Statoil to deliver the next-generation

EC-Drill® Managed Pressure Drilling system. That same month, a deal with BG Group for RMR® and CTS® (Cuttings Transportation System) services in the North Sea was also announced.

In June Enhanced Drilling announced a USD3m deal for its Riserless Mud Recovery (RMR®) system off Sakhalin, Russia, for a major operator.

[mappress]

Press Release, September 03, 2013