Drilling & production

Qatar has agreed to supply an additional 4 million tpa of LNG to India by 2014.

Bill Gates’ firm Terra Firma is in talks with Toshiba to develop the next generation of mini nuclear power plant.

Weatherford International Ltd has announced its participation in a collaborative project to develop a fibre optics based in-well distributed acoustic flowmeter based on the revolutionary iDAS™ technology, developed by Silixa.

The Indonesian government is looking for South Korean investors to back three new floating LNG terminals.

Woodside Energy Ltd has selected Mustang to provide the independent assessment and verification of readiness for one of the world’s heaviest open water floatover installations, the North Rankin B (NRB) platform topsides, to be located on the North West Shelf of Australia.

Australia’s Arrow Energy has accepted an improved takeover bid from Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina worth a reported AU$ 3.44 billion (US$ 3.14 billion). The takeover is subject to approval by Arrow shareholders and Australian authorities.

Total has announced the launch of the Laggan and Tormore gas fields development in the offshore frontier region of the West of Shetland, subject to the UK Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change approval.

Sharecat Solutions has secured a contract from China Oilfield Services subsidiary COSL Drilling Europe AS to support the spares management activity for its newbuild project at Yantai Raffles Shipyard.

A fundraising initiative launched by Mark Elliott, a well-known figure in the oil and gas industry, seeks to raise £1 million for two military charities, as he commits to losing 30 lbs of weight by June 2010.

2010 is hopefully going to be a more productive year for the offshore sector with analysts expecting oil and gas production to return to more healthy levels during the course of the year.

Legislation to cap liability payouts in the event of a nuclear disaster has been pulled by India’s coalition government.

First Solar have become the first purely photovoltaic power company to join the Desertec Industrial Initiative.

Jurong Shipyard Pte Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sembcorp Marine, has secured a contract worth approximately US$ 130 million to carry out pre-conversion works on a very large crude carrier for Petrobras Netherlands BV.

Leading oil and gas executives from the APAC region meet to discuss ways of competing with production from the MENA region.

BP has announced a US$ 7 billion transaction with Devon Energy for assets in Brazil, Azerbaijan and the US deepwater Gulf of Mexico.