Asset Management

Plunging oil prices led to a drastic drop in drilling rigs working in most places in the world, with a notable exception. Baker Hughes’ widely watched weekly report on drilling rigs shows activity has remained steady in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

Those who track drilling and fracturing equipment are apt to mention zombies. That is the living-dead machinery still counted as available to work, but more likely now to be used for spare parts or scrapped.

During a protracted period of depressed prices in E&P, the customer focus for service companies and suppliers shifts to finding ways to reduce the cost of producing a barrel of oil.

Pressure is growing this year for exploration and production (E&P) companies to “face the reality of a prolonged period of low prices,” said Alan Cunningham, technical director for Gaffney, Cline & Associates.

The impact on workers from the global downturn is so large it is difficult to track. At the high end of the job loss estimates is John Graves, owner of Graves & Co., who estimated the number of jobs lost in the oil and gas industry at more than 250,000 at year end, and rising.

Each of the 25 onshore blocks offered to private companies in Mexico’s December auction were awarded, almost all of which went to Mexican companies.

Iran’s oil and gas sector has been significantly affected by the introduction and tightening of international sanctions in recent years. represents a significant step forward in terms of normalizing the country’s relations with the global community.

The first brief flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 did not immediately make the Wright brothers famous; however, within 5 years, enthusiasm for the new technology began to spread around the world. Louis Blériot won a prize for flying over the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft in 1909, and Charles Lindbergh won the USD 25,000 Orteig prize for the first nonstop flig…

Shell undertook a 5-year program to address some of the universal challenges of competence management along with several internal improvement opportunities. The result has been the global implementation of a strategic solution that fundamentally reshaped how competence is managed within the company.

Can aggregative contingent estimation (ACE) improve the quality of oil price forecasts and even project performance? I have come to believe that oil price can be determined with reasonable confidence, and the key to such forecasting is ACE.