Burness Paull & Williamsons to Build International Client Base at OTC

Burness Paull & Williamsons LLP continues to build its international client base by attending the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston.

Paull & Williamsons were pioneers of professional companies attending OTC, sending representatives to the show for more than 20 years. Following last year's merger, Burness Paull & Williamsons' chairman Philip Rodney says the firm's market offering is now even better placed to service its growing international client base.

Philip said: "Paull & Williamsons dominated the Aberdeen market for 40 years, with a leading oil and gas practice and a client list including many high profile clients in the sector. As Burness Paull & Williamsons we have built on that pre-eminent expertise and sector knowledge.

"The creation of the new firm means we have increased specialist knowledge and scale; we are one of Scotland's largest firms and offer enhanced services such as capital markets and pensions."

Burness Paull & Williamsons will send a team of five this year, representing specialisms including corporate finance, employment and private equity. The firm will once again host its annual cocktail party on 7 May, an event which has been a highlight of the OTC calendar for over a decade.

Partner Ken Gordon said: "OTC represents a great opportunity to introduce our new market leading offering to the international oil and gas community and to meet up with a number of our Houston headquartered clients.

"The team will also meet intermediaries and Houston-based law firms to discuss our new, more comprehensive offering and recent legal developments and opportunities in the offshore energy sector."

Ken is attending this year's conference along with partners Scott Allan, Tricia Walker and Tony Byrne and business development manager Victoria Grozier.

Burness Paull & Williamsons operates across a range of key sectors including oil and gas, offering a full range of legal services in exploration and production, corporate finance, health and safety, commercial, dispute resolution, employment, pensions and property.

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Sete Brasil Remains in Talks with OSX to Build Two Drilling Rigs

RIO DE JANEIRO--Sete Brasil said late Friday that shipbuilder OSX Brasil S/A (OSXB3.BR), part of billionaire entrepreneur Eike Batista's industrial empire, remains in the hunt to build two drilling rigs for the company.

Sete Brasil, a holding company that is building 28 high-tech drill rigs for state-run energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR, PETR4.BR), said it still wants to add two more rigs to its portfolio. Sete Brasil was created in 2011 by several Brazilian pension funds and banks, with Petrobras also holding a 10% stake.

"The priority in this negotiation continues to be OSX," Sete Brasil said.

Earlier Friday, a local press report indicated that Sete Brasil had dropped out of talks with OSX. OSX, which is building a shipyard at the Acu port in northeastern Rio de Janeiro state, has been in talks with Sete Brasil since mid-2012. The two rigs Sete Brasil wants to add to its fleet would be rented out on the spot market, a spokeswoman for the company said.

OSX declined to comment about talks with Sete Brasil.

"The company is attentive to new business opportunities with an outlook toward expanding its client list and portfolio of deliveries," OSX said. OSX currently has contracts to build vessels for sister-company OGX (OGXP3.BR), Petrobras, Sapura and Kingfish.

OSX shares closed down 5.8% at BRL2.76 in trading on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange.

Copyright (c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Plains All American To Build New Oil Pipeline in Texas

Plains All American Pipeline LP is building a new pipeline to bring oil from an increasingly fruitful West Texas field to the Corpus Christi and Houston refining markets, the company said Monday.

The pipeline, called the Cactus pipeline, is expected to start shipping up to 200,000 barrels of day of oil in the first quarter of 2015. It would be the latest venture allowing oil producers in West Texas' Permian Basin to send their crude directly to the U.S. Gulf Coast refining belt.

Plains expects the 310-mile pipeline, with an expected cost of up to $375 million, to carry sweet and sour crude to Texas coast. By avoiding the oil transport hub in Cushing, Okla., producers hope to avoid the glut there that has helped depress prices on oil from Cushing.

Plains said it has entered into a letter of intent with a third party regarding a long-term commitment for a majority of the Cactus pipeline's capacity and is in discussions with several potential shippers for the remaining capacity. The pipeline company did not identify the company which has made the commitment or the companies with which Plains has had negotiations.

Several companies have been attracted by the idea of delivering West Texas crude directly to the refineries that dot the U.S. coast of Gulf of Mexico. Sunoco Logistics Partners started shipping such crudes to the Houston area on its Permian Express pipeline in the first quarter. Around the same time, Magellan Midstream Partners LP (MMP) reversed its Longhorn Express pipeline to ship crude from the Permian Basin to Houston.

Plains noted that crude oil delivered through the Cactus pipeline will have access to rail-loading capacity at the Gardendale, Texas, station operated by Plains All American and access to the Eagle Ford barge-dock facility in the Corpus Christi area.

The pipeline company added that the Cactus pipeline capacity can be increased as demand warrants.

Plains has experienced strong demand as it benefits from a huge boost in the U.S. supply of onshore oil.

The company, which transports, stores and sells oil, receives fees for many of its services, so it is less affected by the volatility of oil and gas prices.

Copyright (c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Schlumberger Unveils Slimhole High Build Rate RSS

Schlumberger announced the release of the slimhole PowerDrive Archer high build rate rotary steerable system (RSS). The new RSS delivers build rates of up to 18-degree/100 feet, with full directional control and dogleg assurance for complex 3D well profiles and multilateral well designs.

"The slimhole PowerDrive Archer RSS can drill well profiles previously only possible with motors, in one run, with the ROP and wellbore quality of a fully rotating RSS," said Steve Kaufmann, president of Drilling & Measurements at Schlumberger. "Expanding the capabilities of our high build rate RSS services, this slimhole edition has drilled 130,000 feet in carbonate, sand and unconventional reservoirs as part of our integrated drilling systems offering, including advanced Smith PDC drillbit technology."

Built on the reliability of the PowerDrive X6 system, the slimhole PowerDrive Archer RSS, using a combination of push- and point-the-bit technologies, introduces a step change in drilling performance in geosteering and openhole sidetrack applications as proven in more than 130 field test runs in North America, the Middle East, West Africa, Europe and Asia.

In the Permian Basin, Cimarex Energy needed to drill a 6 1/8-in horizontal section within a 7-foot thick true vertical depth zone in the Bone Spring shale formation. The well design included high dogleg severity with a 10-degree/100-foot curve. The slimhole high build rate RSS was selected to eliminate additional trips downhole, and the challenging curve and lateral were drilled in one run, saving 26 hours of drilling time.

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Schlumberger Unveils Slimhole High Build Rate RSS

Schlumberger announced the release of the slimhole PowerDrive Archer high build rate rotary steerable system (RSS). The new RSS delivers build rates of up to 18-degree/100 feet, with full directional control and dogleg assurance for complex 3D well profiles and multilateral well designs.

"The slimhole PowerDrive Archer RSS can drill well profiles previously only possible with motors, in one run, with the ROP and wellbore quality of a fully rotating RSS," said Steve Kaufmann, president of Drilling & Measurements at Schlumberger. "Expanding the capabilities of our high build rate RSS services, this slimhole edition has drilled 130,000 feet in carbonate, sand and unconventional reservoirs as part of our integrated drilling systems offering, including advanced Smith PDC drillbit technology."

Built on the reliability of the PowerDrive X6 system, the slimhole PowerDrive Archer RSS, using a combination of push- and point-the-bit technologies, introduces a step change in drilling performance in geosteering and openhole sidetrack applications as proven in more than 130 field test runs in North America, the Middle East, West Africa, Europe and Asia.

In the Permian Basin, Cimarex Energy needed to drill a 6 1/8-in horizontal section within a 7-foot thick true vertical depth zone in the Bone Spring shale formation. The well design included high dogleg severity with a 10-degree/100-foot curve. The slimhole high build rate RSS was selected to eliminate additional trips downhole, and the challenging curve and lateral were drilled in one run, saving 26 hours of drilling time.

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Sembcorp Marine to Build $725M Topside for Ivar Aasen Project

Sembcorp Marine disclosed late Thursday that it build a $725 million (SGD900 million) offshore platform integrated topside, which will be bound for the Ivar Aasen development in the North Sea.

The floating productions unit of Sembcorp Marine, SMOE, inked a letter of intent with Det Norske Oljeselskap (DNO) - a Norwegian exploration and production company - to undertake the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work of the topside.

The 13,700 tonne topside, which is designed to house 70 people and to be installed at a water depth of 367 feet (112 meters), will be equipped with a living quarters module and a helideck. It will also include modules for process, gas compression, separation, water injection, flare boom, metering and utilities.

SMOE will start construction in December this year, with sail-away scheduled in March 2016.

The Ivar Aasen project is situated west of the Johan Sverdrup field in the Norwegian Continental Shelf, 112 miles (180 kilometers) west of Stavanger, containing approximately 150 million barrels of oil equivalents. First oil from the project is expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2016. The anticipated life span of Ivar Aasen can reach 20 years.

Quintella has reported on the upstream and downstream oil and petrochemicals markets from 2004. Email Quintella at quintella.koh@rigzone.com.

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Lamprell Bags Contract to Build Jackup for Jindal Group

UAE-based Lamprell disclosed Wednesday that it has won a contract from Dev Drilling - a company within the Singapore's Jindal Group - to build and deliver a LeTourneau-design, self-elevating unit of a Super 116E (Enhanced) Class design.

The rig is designed to operate in water depths of up to 350 feet and will have a rated drilling depth of 30,000 feet. Lamprell will fabricate the jackup rig in its yard in Hamriyah. The construction phase of this project is expected to take approximately 18 months.

This is the second rig that Lamprell will construct for Jindal, following on from the announcement on Nov.8, 2011, when Lamprell revealed that it is constructing a Super 116E rig for delivery to Jindal in November this year.

Jindal has the option to order a second rig; exercisable during a period of six months from the effective date of the original contract.

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To the President’s Ear: Build the Keystone XL

In an interview with Fox Business Channel this week, billionaire Warren Buffett voiced support for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline:

"I’m not an expert, but it certainly seems like it makes sense to me. There are an awful lot of pipelines running in the United States and net, they've certainly been a huge plus for the country. … Based on what I know, I would say it makes sense.”

That the “Oracle of Omaha” supports the Keystone XL is significant. That Buffett’s support for the project follows similar opinions by others known to have the president’s ear is important as well. These include:

Former President Bill Clinton (Feb. 29, 2012):

“I think we should embrace [the Keystone XL pipeline] and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work." 

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (May 6, 2012):

“[America’s unions] are not divided on the pipeline itself. They are divided on how the pipeline is done. … I think we are all unanimous by saying we should build the pipeline, but we have to do it consistent with all environmental standards, and I think we can work that out, I really do, and we are for that happening.”

Former Obama ‘car czar” Steve Rattner (Jan. 5, 2012):

“My instinct is [the president] should approve it. My instinct is we need the energy, we need the jobs and it can be done in a safe way.”

Let’s see. That’s one of the most successful businessmen in the history of the planet, a former president, one of organized labor’s top leaders and one of the administration’s former leading economic policy advisors – all in favor of the Keystone XL, a project that would create jobs, deliver energy and help boost our country’s future energy security.

The president is the reason the Keystone XL remains on the drawing board. He has the authority to end more than three years of reviewing and delaying. API Executive Vice President Marty Durbin, in a conference call with reporters:

“We’d like to remind the president and the Congress that bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate have voted in favor of the Keystone XL project, and a recent Gallop poll shows strong public support for project by a 2-1 margin.  In addition, the state of Nebraska is fully engaged in a process to quickly choose a new route that avoids sensitive areas. To borrow from the president’s campaign, it’s time to move forward on this critical project.  Keystone XL is as ‘good-to-go’ as it gets.”

To recap: Buffett, Clinton, Trumka, Rattner. The president has listened to them before. Is he listening now, on the Keystone XL?

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