We asked our community of Commercial Divers that they would most like to get for Christmas, then compiled what we are calling “The 2015 Ultimate Commercial Diver Holiday Gift Guide“.
If you need a last-minute gift for that diver in your life, or just want to see our snarky suggestions…check it out!
Happy Holidays everyone!
Bibby Subsea, through its strategic alliance with Aqueos Corporation, has secured a multi-million dollar decommissioning project in the Gulf of Mexico for an undisclosed oil company.
The work will be undertaken during the first half of 2016 and the DSV Bibby Sapphire will relocate to the Gulf of Mexico during December 2015 to work on this project.
Howard Woodcock, Chief Executive of Bibby Offshore, commented: “North America remains a focus for our international expansion. We have a clear commitment to this region and will continue to develop our strategic alliance with Aqueos Corporation. The contract win announced today is a direct result of our strategic alliance with Aqueos, as well as Bibby Offshore’s successful and long standing track record with the leading international oil company. The broader market remains challenging, but this new project demonstrates and endorses our ability to secure contracts in a highly competitive market.”
After saying my goodbyes to the good folks at BISC, I jumped on a plane and headed into the heart of the Caribbean, the US Virgin Islands. After landing on the island of St. Thomas, I was met byMikey Kent, the Virgin Islands National Park’s Park Diving Officer. We headed over to the island of St. John via ferry and headed up to the Biosphere, VIIS’s HQ. Because I had arrived on a Friday afternoon, we had the weekend ahead of us before starting work on Monday. I happened to land during the final few days of Carnival, the Caribbean’s summer celebration. Let’s just say that when Monday rolled around I was ready to get to work.
The Virgin Islands National Park covers nearly 60% of the island of St. John, but the majority of the Park actually encompasses the outlying marine area as well. Because of the island’s prime location, thousands of visitors are drawn the Park’s waters each year. And the marine crew here at VIIS has their work cut out for them. If you’ve ever camped in a National Park, you’re probably familiar with an “iron ranger”, also known as a fee station.
Because the majority of the Park covers the water, the Park Service has hundreds of boat moorings scattered across the island of St John. Located in sheltered coves along the shore of the picturesque island, visitors can tie up their boats for the night if they register with a floating iron ranger. However, these buoys need regular maintenance, and that’s where the Park Service comes in.
During my first day at VIIS Mikey took me on a tour of the Park’s facilities, which are starkly similar to the ones in American Samoa. We also get a chance to dive in the Park, which was a refreshing after 4 days of being dry. However, after a fun day of exploring and orienting, it was time to get down to business.
On my second day at VIIS I was invited to participate on an 8-hour commercial diving instruction session. All of the diving I have done with the Park thus far has fallen under the Scientific Diving standard, which is exempt from OSHA’s commercial standards, while still being in compliance. However, the maintenance of VIIS’s buoy and ATON (aids to navigation) arrays fall under OSHA’s commercial diving standards. The Park wanted to step up a few of its divers, and I got a chance to expand my knowledge.
There are a lot of different rules regarding commercial diving, and I won’t bore you with the details. The key difference between a standard science dive and a commercial dive is the amount of people you need. In order to execute a dive safely you always need a buddy when in the water, so essentially the smallest science dive team could just be two divers. For commercial diving you need three people; a diver, a tender and a designated person in charge. The diver is the one on SCUBA executing the task, the tender sits on the surface tending a line connected to the diver, and the designated person in charge (DPIC) is running the topside show.
The diver, connected by a tether, technically has a buddy, the tender, who feeds out line or pulls it back in depending on the scenario. If the line is too tight it will prevent the diver from doing his/her job. If there is too much slack out then the diver is at risk of getting entangled. The tender is also in charge of communicating with the diver. Two pulls mean everything is OK, three means I need something and four means get me out of here! The DPIC is usually the person with the most experience for that particular task. He/she knows ever aspect of the dive, and can anticipate any issues the diver might encounter. For example, if the diver gives three pulls on the line, they might be asking for a tool and the DPIC should know which tool they need. Also, as an added safety precaution, the diver has to always carry a “pony bottle” (a very small scuba tank) strapped to his/her main tank with an independent regulator, just in case. Remember, there is only one diver in the water so if you run out of air you’re really on your own. The tender is always ready, with gear configured, to jump in the water as a safety diver in case of emergencies.
After a half-day in the classroom, we headed out onto the Park’s waters to learn about the different mooring configurations and to get a little in-water experience. After working on equipment with the Park Service in Glen Canyon I thought messing with shackles and pry-bars underwater would be easy. I should have known better; seawater and metal are quite reactive underwater. Plus, the mooring lines are invariably covered in fouling organisms such as algae, razor clams and fire coral. After nearly digging myself into the sand trying to pry a shackle loose, I definitely have a lot more respect for the aquatic crew at VIIS. Though they’re mostly biotechs, they maintain over 200 moorings across the Park. Oh, and there are only three full time divers by the way.
On day three I was officially stepped up to participate on some working dives with VIIS. I jumped in the water with one of the biotechs to retrieve a mooring ball that had been hit by a boat and sank. We had to use a 50lb lift bag, which was a lot of work. After that, I spent the rest of the day switching off as either a tender or a diver. Commercial diving is definitely a far cry from science diving, and by the end of the day I was exhausted. But that’s just another day for the crew at VIIS.
On day four, Mikey and I switched things up a little. The Virgin Islands has a plethora of natural and cultural resources, and I was fortunate enough to join the Park’s archeologist, Ken Wild, for a day of cultural resource diving. My background in marine ecology didn’t lend itself to underwater archeology, but it was really great to see another aspect of underwater science. Ken has had a lifetime of experience in the Atlantic and Caribbean, just being on the boat with him it was hard not to absorb some of the history from the surrounding area. We checked out some anomalies from a historic site around St. Thomas, and then investigated a shipwreck that Ken found in the shallows right around the corner from the Biosphere.
If my week wasn’t interesting enough, on day 5 I jumped in the water with VIIS’s biologist, Thomas Kelley. Thomas is another titan in the Caribbean, and together we explored a few of the Park’s more interesting reefs. Thomas was preparing for next week’s big coral reef research foray, NPS/NOAA’s biennial Fish Blitz. Much like diving with Ken, while diving with Thomas I absorbed a lot of information regarding the natural resources VIIS has to offer.
Over the weekend Mikey kept me in the water by offering to let me dive with a local dive shop, and in return I shadowed a basic open water scuba course he was conducting. In one week I managed to dive every day. From commercial diving to cultural resource diving, natural resource diving to recreational diving and finally professional diving. But my time with VIIS wasn’t over yet! Every other year NOAA partners with the Park Service to survey the reefs around the US Virgin Islands with tremendous detail. Although I had missed the Blitz on St. Croix, I was fortunate enough to participate on the first two days on St. John.
On Monday the ragtag group of NOAA biologists gathered at the Biosphere to shake hands with the Park Service crew, some of which had come from Florida to help out for the next two weeks. After the meet and great, and a couple of hours in the office, we headed down to the water to get the show on the road. NOAA scientists had generated dozens of GPS coordinates scattered across water from St. John to the outer edge of the territorial boundaries (the British Virgin islands are almost within swimming distance of the USVI at some places). Instead of diving known sites, we would be dropping into the unknown to sample the benthic habitat, and the diversity and abundance of fish.
The crew was split into three teams across three boats, and from the harbor we motored to our sites. On a typical Fish Blitz day each team will sample 5-6 sites; if all goes well each site will only take a team 1 dive. In order to reduce surface interval times, the teams use Nitrox instead of compressed air. However, this added a further complication because the closest Nitrox compressor is at a dive shop on St. Thomas. One boat became the dedicated tank boat; towards the end of the day we would call our dives early, round up the empties from the other boats and motor to St. Thomas to get the tanks filled. Because I was only an observer on the Fish Blitz I volunteered to help on the tank ferry.
The two days I got to participate on the Fish Blitz were very exciting, and all too familiar at the same time. Much like the Kelp Forest Monitoring project, there is an immense data set that the Fish Blitz adds to. From coral health and rugosity, to benthic habitat and fish diversity, the Blitz covers it all.
After a week and a half on St. John, it was time to pack up my bags and head over to the nearby island of St. Croix. Most of all I’d like to thank Mikey Kent for keeping me in the water every day, and for giving me a place to stay. I’d also like to thank Thomas Kelly, Jeff Miller, Ken Wild, and Alanna Smith for putting up with me. Stay loose St. John!
A solid foundation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education is an essential step in pursuing a career in oil and gas. The ACT, an organization responsible for the ACT college readiness assessment, releases an annual report which focuses on the progress of the ACT-tested graduating class relative to college readiness. According to findings from the most recent report, released in Aug. 2015, many STEM-interested students are not well-prepared for the rigorous college math and science course work that is required of STEM majors.
Rigzone explores possible reasons as to why so many students are underprepared for STEM college course work and educators weigh in on how to combat the issue.
A positive finding of the ACT report is the fact that interest in STEM remains high – nearly half of graduates who took the ACT in 2015 had an interest in STEM. Five-year trends show an increase of 2 percent for students interested in computer science and math majors.
The industry has had challenges in the past attracting women and minorities into STEM fields, and while the report still shows overall STEM interest among minorities (with the exception of Asians) and women is lower than Whites and men respectively, the overall increase in interest is a trend in the right direction.
According to the report, the challenge then becomes translating the interest into pursuit and completion of STEM majors.
Lyle McKinney, assistant professor of higher education within the department of educational leadership and policy studies for the College of Education at the University of Houston, shared an interesting statistic.
“In the state of Texas, 80 percent of students who take remedial math in college had an A or B average in their high school math classes,” McKinney told Rigzone. “In that case, it’s an indication that your high school course grades don’t always directly translate into being college-ready in a given subject.”
McKinney, who conducts research focused primarily on students who attend community colleges, found that analysis in the Houston area reveals that community college students are typically assigned to developmental course work in math, reading or writing, with the largest proportion of those students in developmental math.
“In some of these institutions in the area, 65 to 70 percent of students in an incoming cohort of recent high school graduates will be placed into taking one or more developmental math courses. So, right off the bat this is showing you that the students graduating high school may have the diploma, but when they show up in college and take placement exams, they learn they’re farther behind than they thought,” said McKinney. “They’re not as prepared as they should be to take developmental math and that’s a key gatekeeper course for a student who wants to progress in a STEM field.”
John Colborn, director of Skills for America’s Future, an initiative of the Aspen Institute, noted that there are also some people whose high school experience isn’t successful who find opportunities later down the road.
“What we do know is that if you come out of high school with deficits in math, pursuing a STEM career – leaving everything just the way it is now – is a challenge,” Colborn told Rigzone. “We know if folks are referred to remedial math in college, it’s very hard for them to succeed toward a STEM credential, which is why I think building up alternative ways to remediation, integrated basic skills with academic and vocational education, is really critical to helping people over that hump.”
McKinney said the ACT report is just the latest in several related messages that reveal students are not prepared for the rigorous STEM course work in college.
“It’s all a part of the same puzzle – how to improve STEM fields and students’ preparation for those fields and strengthen our workforce as it relates to STEM fields and careers,” said McKinney. “I don’t think there’s been an intentional neglect to focus on [STEM readiness], but it’s a complex issue that involves the alignment of K-12 and college curriculum.”
Drawing from his own research, McKinney said in efforts to diversify STEM fields, there should be a focus on improving math preparation, particularly in Hispanic and African American students, whom are overrepresented in developmental education at the college level.
However, the industry shouldn’t flag the alarm just yet because of one report. The challenges aren’t new, McKinney said, but further indicates that students aren’t equipped with the necessary skills and competencies needed when they graduate high school.
“This is about the leaky pipeline … they are not issues that just show up senior year of high school and then all of a sudden a student is not college-ready for pursuing a STEM major or career path,” said McKinney. “It takes communication between K-12 and higher education, business partnerships and partnerships between education and the business sector as well as federal and state governments. We need a multipronged approach to solving this challenge.”
Colborn said while the 2 percent increase in students interested in computer science and math majors is “moving the needle,” it also signifies the importance of continuing to build the pipeline. And there needs to be a variety of alternatives in doing so.
“Whether it’s engaging with incumbent workers, working with adults who are changing careers or working with folks pursuing postsecondary education, it’s going to be an all of the above type of solution that’s ultimately going to address this issue in a more systematic way,” Colborn said.
The findings of the report are something educators should be concerned about, partly because the jobs that are projected to grow in the next 20 years are those with an increasing reliance on math and technical skills, noted Colborn.
“As talent is retiring from those industries, it’s getting harder and harder to backfill the talent those industries require,” he said.
In addressing the pipeline challenge in high school, Colborn has seen efforts that include paying greater attention to creating career exposure and building career opportunities at the high school level.
“Experience in industries does really help broaden perspectives … one thing that stuck out in the report was the gap between African American and Hispanics and women in terms of their career preferences in STEM. I think a lot of that really stems from the lack of exposure that these populations have [to STEM]” Colborn said. “The more that high schools can do and employers can do to provide high school students with chances to explore career opportunities, do career exploration days on-site and employers to offer internships – all of that helps expose people to the wider opportunities that are available. I think that’s going to be a part of the solution for sure.”
Oslo-listed seismic contractor, Polarcus, has received a Letter of Intent (LOI) from an undisclosed client for a 3D marine seismic contract.
According to Polarcus, the project will start imminently and will run for approximately two months.
The company’s RightBAND technique will be used for broadband data acquisition. Reportedly, this technique is aimed at maximizing signal-to-noise at target geologic horizons by tuning the seismic source and receivers to the right frequency band to deliver optimized de-ghosted broadband 3D images.
Duncan Eley, COO Polarcus, said: “Such an award in this challenging market is the result of us continuing to work closely with our clients to ensure exceptional service delivery with safe operations, high quality data and extremely efficient seismic acquisition solutions.”
The company did not disclose the location of the survey nor the potential value of the deal.
Brazil’s state of Rio de Janeiro, home to the bulk of the country’s oil production, threatened on Monday to impose a new tax on oil and natural gas in the state if the country’s oil regulator ANP does not adjust its royalty calculation. The state, whose budget has been hurt by a nearly 40 percent decline in the price of Benchmark Brent crude oil in the last year, has been pressuring the regulator to change the way it determines the so-called oil reference price.
If the calculation is not changed, the government plans to apply a 2.71 real (69.8-cent) per barrel tax on each barrel of oil or natural gas equivalent produced in fields located in state waters. That would raise about 1.8 billion reais ($464 million) in 2016, slightly more than the 1.6 billion reais it is losing because of the current calculation, state officials told Reuters on Monday. Rio de Janeiro produces 67 percent of Brazil’s oil and 40 percent of its natural gas.
Among the state’s main producers are state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, BG Group Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The state’s financial crisis has reached the point where the government is intentionally delaying payments and universities and hospitals have seen their services reduced. Some public servants are still waiting to receive their full November salaries.
Local organizers of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games have been forced to make cuts to their remaining budgets. Royalty payments are paid as a percentage of the reference price for each barrel of oil produced. The reference price has typically been far below the Brent price because the bulk of Brazilian crude has been low-grade, low-price heavy crude.
According to Rio de Janeiro-state Governor Luiz Fernando Pezão, the calculation, first developed in the 1970s, fails to properly account for large amounts of higher-grade medium and light crude being produced from new subsalt fields south of Rio de Janeiro. “We have a request in with the ANP and Petrobras where we show that the price per barrel or oil or gas is wrong and out of date,” Pezão told reporters on Monday. “Brazil is producing another type of oil.” Royalties typically range from 10 percent to as much as 40 percent depending on the size, productivity and profitability of the field.
($1 = 3.88 reais)
Cardiff-based Tidal Energy Ltd has installed the country’s first tidal energy generator in Ramsey Sound, Pembrokeshire.
Called DeltaStream, the device will, according to the company, become one of the first grid-connected demonstration devices worldwide to generate green, sustainable and predictable tidal power.
The patented DeltaStream device was loaded off the quayside in Pembroke Port by the offshore construction vessel Siem Daya 1, before making the short passage to Ramsey Sound for installation.
Managing Director of Tidal Energy Ltd, Martin Murphy, said: “The deployment of DeltaStream marks a significant achievement for the original inventor of the device, Richard Ayre, and for our team, our shareholders, Wales and the wider tidal industry. We are immensely proud to be one of the frontrunners of tidal energy development in this nascent industry, which has great and far-reaching potential for green energy production.”
Weighing 200 tonnes, with a frame 16m long and height of 18m, the DeltaStream 400kW demonstration device has a gravity-based foundation which sits on the seabed under its own weight, without the need to drill or pile the structure into the seabed.
A total of around £15M has been invested in the project, which has been provided by the company’s majority shareholder, Welsh renewable energy company Eco2 Ltd, along with EU funds worth £8M delivered through the Welsh Government.
Eco2 Ltd, CEO, David Williams said that the company looks forward to demonstrating the viability of this technology and developing its commercial scale demonstration project at St Davids Head.
This site at St Davids Head in Pembrokeshire is two miles north of Ramsey Sound and is being developed by Eco2 in partnership with Tidal Energy Ltd. This sould involve up to nine DeltaStream devices being deployed, generating enough power for approximately 10,000 homes.
Royal Dutch Shell plc announced Monday that its proposed merger with BG Group plc has received unconditional clearance from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), marking the final pre-conditional approval required for the deal. Shell also confirmed it currently expects an overall potential reduction of approximately 2,800 roles globally across the combined group as a result of the merger, which translates to around 3 percent of the total combined group workforce.
The latest clearance follows previously announced approvals from regulators including the United States Federal Trade Commission, Brazil’s competition authority CADE, the European Commission, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board. Scheduled to be completed by early 2016, the merger is the largest of the past decade and the third biggest oil and gas deal ever by enterprise value. Shell’s merger with BG will bring the energy major assets in Brazil, East Africa, Australia, Kazakhstan and Egypt. The deal is expected to help Shell compete better with the world’s top oil major, ExxonMobil.
Commenting on the final approval from MOFCOM, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said in a company statement:
“We’re grateful to MOFCOM for its thorough and professional review of the recommended combination, and I am delighted we now have all the pre-conditional approvals needed to move to the next important phase. This is a strategic deal that will make Shell a more profitable and resilient company in a world where oil and gas prices could remain lower for some time. We will now seek approval from both sets of shareholders as we move towards deal completion in early 2016.”
Following a trend in declining upstream spend among European energy companies, Shell stated Nov. 3 that it was “pulling all levers to manage through the current oil price downturn” including a 10 percent reduction in operating costs and a 20 percent reduction in capital spending in 2015, totalling $11 billion. The firm has also cut its workforce by more than 7,000 people so far in 2015 and identified a further $1 billion of pre-tax synergies to bring cost savings from combining its business with BG to a total of $3.5 billion by 2018.
The company announced Oct. 27 that it would shelf an oil sands project in Alberta, which it had already invested billions of dollars in, and decided in late September to cease exploration activity offshore Alaska, taking a large financial hit in the process.
Mexico’s oil regulator awarded the first onshore contract up for grabs at Tuesday’s auction, a tender aimed at boosting start-up oil companies following a historic sector reform finalized last year. Mexican firm Compania Petrolera Perseus won the development rights to the 10.6 square mile (27.5 sq km) Tajon oil field in southern Tabasco state, by offering the government 60.88 percent of pre-tax profits beyond other tax and royalty payments.
Competing alone and in consortia, some 80 mostly Mexican companies pre-qualified for the onshore auction run by the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH). But only half registered to bid on the contracts. Part of the so-called Round One tender, the auction featuring 25 license contracts comes as the price of Mexico’s mostly heavy crude export mix has plunged more than 70 percent since last year to less than $28 per barrel.
Under the circumstances, Mexican officials have said they would consider the auction a success if at least five contracts are assigned. The CNH awards contracts based on which bidder offers the biggest share of pre-tax profits to the government via a weighted formula that also includes an investment commitment.
The share of profits is 90 percent of the formula, while the investment commitment accounts for the rest. The energy reform ended national oil company Pemex’s monopoly on crude production and aims to reverse a decade-long slide in output by luring new expertise and private investment.
Norway’s Ulstein Design and Solutions has assigned Eva Kristensen as its new managing director, effective from January next year.
Kristensen will also enter into the role as COO for the Design & Solutions business area, and be one of the executives in the group management of Ulstein Group ASA.
She comes from the position as managing director at GE Oil & Gas Nordics, a position she has held for five years. Prior to this, she was managing director for two companies in the Aker system.
CEO, Gunvor Ulstein, said: “Kristensen has a solid background from the subsea, drilling, oil and gas industry. We look forward to work together with her in developing our organization.”