Highlights of the Week

Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (May 11 – May 17).

Subsea 7 has informed that a programme of cost reduction measures will be implemented including a re-sizing of the fleet and workforce, and the restructuring of its corporate organisation.

It is envisaged that the overall reduction in the global workforce would be approximately 2,500 by early 2016, down from the 13,000 reported at the end of 2014. The global fleet will be reduced by up to 11 vessels, based on a mixture of non-renewal of charter vessels and either disposal or stacking of owned vessels.

A group of ex-FMC employees have teamed up with subsea installation player DeepOcean to found Optime Subsea Services, whose multi Completion System (mCS) can install subsea trees at up to 80% the time and cost of traditional solutions.

Optime Subsea Services is a newly established subsea oil and gas services company. It has set up offices in Houston, USA, and the city of Notodden, which is part of the ‘Subsea Valley’ industry cluster in Norway. The company develops its own technology and provides services within subsea intervention, installation and work over operations.

Saipem is to resume its pipeline construction operations in the Black Sea after receiving a go-ahead notice from South Stream Transport B.V.

The notification comes just a few day after Gazprom, now a 100% owner of South Stream Transport, announced further development on Turkish Stream project, setting its launch date for December next year.

Technip has secured a contract with BP E&P for the design, engineering, fabrication, installation and pre-commissioning of the new production pipeline systems on the south side of the Thunder Horse production drilling quarters unit.

At a water depth of approximately 1,900 meters, the current field development is located in Mississippi Canyon Blocks 778 and 822, in the ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico environment.

SapuraKencana’s wholly-owned subsidiary companies within the engineering and construction division have been awarded contracts with a combined value of up to USD269 million in Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam and India.

Among these contracts awards is the initiation of SapuraKencana’s local operations in Mexico after the company has been hired by Pemex for the installation of structures and superstructures of fixed marine platforms, pipelaying and lifting of major power generation equipment.