Superior cans Ocean Flow takeover plan

US offshore services group Superior Offshore International has cancelled plans to acquire subsea engineering company Ocean Flow International.

Superior Offshore chief executive Jim Mermis said the companies had however agreed to co-operate in future for large deep-water projects. Ocean Flow is a privately held company specializing in deepwater project engineering and offshore project management services.
Read More

Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Iran

Russia has delivered a second consignment of nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr power plant.

The second consignment of fuel for the Bushehr nuclear plant arrived in Iran on Friday. Ahmad Fayazbaksh said, adding that the delivery was the same amount supplied in the first consignment on December 17. Russia will deliver a total of 82 tonnes of nuclear fuel to Iran over two months in eight separate consignments. It would take at least a year to start the power station. Iran had said it hoped the 1000-megawatt plant in the southern city of Bushehr could come on line within three months, at up to 200 megawatts before being cranked up to full capacity nine months later. The United States and Israel have voiced fears that Iran's civilian nuclear power program could be a cover for a program to develop atomic weapons, a charge denied by Tehran.

Read More

Joint venture to supply nitrogen to Mexico

Air Products said a joint venture company with its Grupo Infra partner would supply 90 MMscfd of nitrogen to Petroleos Mexicanos Exploracion y Produccion (PEP).

Nitrogen from the gas turbine and steam-driven facility is supplied for injection and enhanced oil and gas recovery from PEP's Jujo-Tecominoacan oil fields near Villahermosa in Tabasco, Mexico. The nitrogen plant project, announced in 2006, began its supply of nitrogen during November as scheduled. In 2006, state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos said it planned to invest 13 billion pesos during 2007-21 in Jujo-Tecominoacan oil field, its second-largest hydrocarbon reservoir in southern Mexico. The investment is to include completing 11 development wells and repairing 34 wells as well as the construction of 6 km of oil-gas pipelines, 25 km of oil pipelines, and 15 km of gas pipelines.
Read More

Fairstar begins Fjord sea trials

The Netherlands-based Fairstar Heavy Transport NV completed the conversion of a semisubmersible barge into a self-propelled heavy transport vessel, Fjord, and it is presently undergoing sea trials offshore Malta.

Fjord is capable of carrying large drilling rigs and similar structures. Fairstar was founded in 2005. The company's business plan is to focus on transporting offshore equipment when it best serves the client, as opposed to voyage timing triggered by the schedule of the transport vessel. In 2008 Fairstar will add a second vessel, Fjell, to its fleet. Fairstar has been embroiled in a shareholder dispute. Earlier this month, Henk van den Berg, a 1.82 percent shareholder in Fairstar Heavy Transport NV, through his company Oude Maas Beheer BV, filed a complaint with the Enterprise Chamber of the Court of Appeals in Amsterdam seeking a judicial inquiry into the affairs of Fairstar as well as petitioning the court to suspend all of the members of the company's Management and Supervisory Boards.
Read More

First pile driven for new

Almost soundlessly, the first steel pile for the 445-metre-long 21-metre-wide mega cruise ship pier was driven into Great Bay on the signal of Port Affairs Commissioner Theo Heyliger and Carnival Corporation Chairman Mickey Arison.

Work on the new pier will be in full swing as of today. The celebratory group aboard the red harbor pilot boat included Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) President Michele Paige and Ballast Nedam Area Manager for the Caribbean and South America Johan Verhagen. The new pier, to be completed at the end of November 2008, will be juxtaposed to the existing Dr. A.C. Wathey Cruise Pier that was completed in 2001. Two 220,000-tonne cruise ships, slated to debut in 2009, will be able to dock alongside the yet-to-be named pier. The Dr. A.C. Wathey Cruise and Cargo Facilities expansion will keep the island on the cusp of cruise tourism development, an industry that has seen a decline in the Caribbean in 2007.

Read More

Frustrated Commodore crosses the line

Matt Allen, the Commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, the organising club for the Rolex Sydney Hobart, has crossed the finish line in the Rolex Sydney Hobart at the helm of his modified Volvo 70 Ichi Ban.

She crossed at 6:01pm this afternoon, the third boat to finish the race. It has been a frustrating day for Allen and his crew. They were enjoying the best sailing of the race this morning ahead of a fresh northerly when a loud bang signalled the end of their bid for a podium spot. One of Ichi Ban’s twin rudders had snapped off. “We had dropped a spinnaker in the water as a result of a halyard failure half an hour before it broke and the spinnaker underwater did hit the rudder, but we don’t think that would have caused the failure,” Allen said. Volvo 70s have a rudder on either side, and it was the port rudder that went. So, while the boat would continue to handle well on port tack, on starboard tack it would be very difficult to keep the remaining rudder in the water.

Read More

Iraq threatens to stop oil exports to South Korea over its direct dealings with Kurds

Iraq's oil ministry has threatened to stop all crude exports to South Korea if that nation proceeds with a deal it signed with the semiautonomous Kurdistan regional government.

In early November, a consortium led by the state-run Korea National Oil Corp., or KNOC, secured exploration rights from the Kurdish regional government for an oil field in the Northern Province. The Korean consortium includes SK Energy, South Korea's biggest oil refiner, and GS Holdings Corp. The ministry has made it clear that no contracts should be signed until a new national oil law is passed. There was a clear warning to these companies that they will be blacklisted and excluded from any future cooperation with the ministry. Iraq is the sixth-largest provider of oil to the country. The Kurds have signed more than a dozen contracts with foreign oil companies, insisting Iraq's constitution gives them that authority.

Read More