Jurong Shipyard has won a S$130 million ($93 million) order from Petrobras Netherlands for pre-conversion of a VLCC to the FPSO P62.

Sembcorp subsidiary SMOE has won a $550 million contract to build ConocoPhillips Skandinavia’s new Ekofisk accommodation platform topsides.

Nord Stream AG has awarded Technip a $47.6 million frame contract for the Nord Stream pipelay project in the Baltic Sea, designed to export gas from fields in Russia to customers in Europe.

Engineering contractor Offshore Design Engineering (ODE) and Scottish construction company Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) have agreed to jointly pursue UK offshore oil and gas turnkey design and build (EPC) contracts.

On the heels of its recent Davy Jones discovery, McMoRan Exploration Co. is the apparent high bidder on 17 to 19 blocks in the Central Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 213 held by the Minerals Management Service on March 17, 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Albert Einstein said: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity.” Is it not insanity to continue to use the same contractual language on high specification rigs as we have on the less complex rigs?

The ongoing push for more producible oil and gas reservoirs is leading the industry into greater offshore depths and harsher environments. Traditional design approaches to developing equipment and systems for shallower offshore wells often don’t work effectively in these deeper, harsher environments. How can petroleum and marine mechanical engineers move outside their traditional realm of experience to develop new designs that will improve drilling performance in these new challenging environments?