Middle East

Saipem has been awarded two new offshore contracts, one for an Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) project in the Black Sea and one for decommissioning activities in the North Sea, with the total value amounting to approximately US$850mn.

The first contract was assigned by Turkish Petroleum OTC for the second phase of the Sakarya FEED and EPCI Project, and entails the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of a 16” pipeline, 175 km long at 2,200 m water depth in the Turkish Black Sea Waters. The offshore operation will begin in summer 2024 and will be conducted by Saipem’s flagship vessel, Castorone.

The other contract has been assigned by EnQuest Heather Ltd. for the decommissioning of the existing Thistle A Platform located in the UK sector of the North Sea. Saipem’s activities will include the engineering, preparation, removal and disposal of the jacket and topsides, with possible extension to further subsea facilities. The services will be carried out by the Saipem 7000, one of the largest semi-submersible heavy-lifting vessels currently in the world.

Fabrizio Botta, Saipem Chief Commercial Officer, said, “These important awards demonstrate Saipem’s excellent competitive positioning in the Offshore Engineering & Construction market a sector that is experiencing a full expansion momentum of which Saipem is ready to seize the opportunities.

“The contract awarded in the Black Sea is a confirmation of Siapem’s prominent positioning and of its long-standing relationship with the clients. The North Sea contract, finally, is a further example of Saipem’s capabilities in a segment where the combination of innovative engineering, unique assets and safe operations is crucial.”

ADNOC Drilling Company has signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Masdar, one of the world’s leading clean energy companies, for the collaboration around development, investment, operations and projects to responsibly advance the energy transition.

Under the MoU, the company will engage as a drilling technical expert and advisor to support Masdar’s deployment of geothermal energy around the world. The companies will jointly evaluate the potential for ADNOC Drilling to provide geothermal drilling services.

Chief Executive Office for ADNOC Drilling, Abdulrahman Abdulla Al Seari, said, “Geothermal energy has enormous global potential and energy developers are challenged to ensure smart and innovative ways to deliver cost-effective wells. Our leading integrated drilling services offering can bring advanced, efficient start-to-finish drilling and completion technologies to enable Masdar the potential to generate clean geothermal energy to cool thousands of homes and office buildings.”

Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Chief Executive Officer at Masdar, commented, “This MoU with ADNOC Drilling further reinforces Masdar’s commitment to unlocking clean energy opportunities across a wide range of technologies. With Masdar recently adding geothermal energy to our growing clean energy portfolio, we are excited about the important role that geothermal can play in helping to drive forward the global energy transition, and we look forward to working with ADNOC Drilling to realise that potential.”

Masdar entered the geothermal energy sector last month, with a strategic investment in Indonesia’s Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE), one of the world’s largest geothermal players.

This year’s OWI Middle East and North Africa (OWI MENA 2023) conference promises to be grand affair as sights are set to broaden the format and shine the spotlight towards operators in the Gulf and North Africa equally.

With the tagline of this year’s conference being ‘future-proof your intervention projects to exceed environmental targets and optimise well programmes by utilising transformative digital and downhole technologies’, OWI MENA is the only place to offer key learnings to the well intervention community in order to the build the best roadmap for future growth.

Constantly evolving and growing, OWI MENA 2023 boasts the largest roster of speakers to date, with 20 operator speakers set to lead discussions on key topics such as market status, sustainable well programmes, well integrity, innovative technologies and end of life. Speakers include representatives from ADNOC, Shell, bp, Aramco, and many more.

After taking on board client feedback, there is a huge appetite within the community to hear from North African operators, and this year there is a dedicated spotlight session for the region. OWI MENA 2023 will also exhibit two networking sessions, three breakout workshops and more than 12 demos in the Innovative Technology Showcase Hall in order to further promote collaboration between delegates. 40% of attendance will be from major, independent or national operators, as well as 35 % from expert technology providers, meaning there is ample opportunity to expand individual networks.

For more information and session details, the full brochure can be downloaded here. Any questions regarding the conference please reach out to Rachael Brand at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Saipem, an advanced technological and engineering platform for the design, construction and operation of infrastructures and plants, has worked with MCS, an underwater technical and digital solutions company, to launch a new asset integrity management system.

As per the announcement on social media, ‘The PALM Suite’ (which stands for Platform for Asset Lean Management) is designed to support offshore energy operators with asset data management, risk assessment and inspections planning of offshore infrastructure across oil and gas, renewables, power and data networks.

According to Saipem, The PALM Suite unlock a new layer of service-oriented capabilities and leverages advanced features such as 3D reconstruction for subsea dimensional control and IoT data gathering. The collaboration brings together Saipem’s extended asset integrity expertise and subsea robotics portfolio with MCS’ data science and software competencies.

Despite geopolitical developments such as the fresh Covid-19 wave in China and the outbreak of war in eastern Europe, there are positive indications that an assured oil and gas demand coupled with a stable oil price are setting the stage for a prosperous future for the Middle East’s well intervention industry.

From the explosion of Covid-19 in early 2020 to the Autumn of 2022, global uncertainty unsettled the stability of the oil and gas industry and led to wide fluctuations for the oil price. Within this period, the price ranged from as low as US$21.44 (WTI) to as high as US$122.11 per barrel (WTI) before settling at around the US$80 mark at the end of 2022. As the industry heads deeper into the new year, many commentators are bullish that, partly due to cuts to production by OPEC+, the oil price will stabilise and could even surpass the US$100 mark once again – Morgan Stanley, for instance, has forecasted the Brent oil price to hit as high as US$110. More conservatively, the EIA has suggested the Brent crude oil spot price will average at US$92, which is still a healthy number for those working within the industry.

The EIA has also indicated that while oil demand will remain lacklustre in Q1 2023, it will begin to regain meaningful momentum in Q2 2023 and is likely to go beyond 2019 levels in the process. From a longer-term perspective, OPEC’s 2022 World Outlook 2045 has identified fossil fuel’s continued prominent role within the energy industry for the next two decades and forecasts oil retaining a 29% share in the global energy mix by 2045 with gas holding 24%.

These trends spell happy reading for the oil and gas companies operating within the Middle East and North African region who will have to continue working to increase oil production over the years to meet blossoming demand. However, the environmental concerns have not passed them by and most operators within the region are also incorporating stringent climate objectives to help mitigate their emission output.

So how will these organisations balance the tightrope of greater production and less climate impact? Well, while a number of initiatives are being pursued to help reduce emissions to justify further drilling, one answer lies in well intervention which offers production rate enhancement without the need for further wells to come online. Indeed, with the oil price looking so healthy, there is expectations that the region’s intervention market will rapidly grow over the short- to medium-term as operators have the cash to explore the option. There are more than 10,000 offshore wells throughout the region (on top of the onshore well count that is much higher), according to Rystad, and these have an average well life of 16-21 years, above the global average of 10-15 years. Well intervention, which offers the opportunity to revamp the production rates of ageing, flagging wells, is therefore emerging as an attractive solution to tick all boxes.

Read the full, free-to-read report, including an exploration of the factors shaping business objectives from those operating within the well intervention market, here.

Clariant Oil Services, a leading supplier of specialty oilfield production chemicals and services to the oil and gas industry with product offerings in enhances oil recovery, offshore and deep water, well services additives and more, has expanded its presence in EMEA with the launch of a state-of-the-art facility for advanced oil and gas solutions.

Clariant made the announcement alongside the return of ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi which is taking place from 31 October – 3 November. The EMEA Technical Centre is located in the Dubai Science Park (DSP) in Dubai, UAE, and will leverage the latest technologies and more sustainable oilfield chemicals.

The hub will give customers in major oil producing countries access to Clariant’s global innovation team and address three competencies: corrosion, fluid separation, and flow assurance.

“The EMEA Technical Centre brings autonomous application testing facilities to the oil and gas industry, doubling throughput and allowing customers to swiftly realise performance and cost-driven solutions,” said Zied Ghazouani, Head of EMEA, Clariant Oil Services. “Clariant will deploy novel solutions to protect the integrity of customer assets, ensure continuity of production, and enhance asset productivity, while not losing sight of sustainable development goals.”

Clariant is committed to using its world-leading expertise to help customers achieve their sustainability transformations across every phase of the oil and gas lifecycle. Earlier this year, Clariant Oil Services launched the D3 PROGRAM to introduce more sustainable solutions to the oil and gas industry. The initiative helps operators reduce carbon emissions and enhance safe operations, while avoiding disruptions to ongoing operations.

Thunder Cranes, a leading provider of portable, modular, offshore rental cranes with a dynamic lift capacity ranging from 2 to 60 tons, has re-opened its operations in the Middle East with a base in the United Arab Emirates.

The company’s temporary installation cranes are designed to be versatile and adaptable, with a number of tie-down scenarios, on-deck placement configurations, and boom-length options to choose from.

The cranes allow clients to efficiently and cost-effectively support P&A, well intervention, facility engineering and decommissioning jobs, without compromising safety, time, and performance.

Previously Thunder Cranes had operated in the region with a base in Dubai from 2009 to 2019. The newly re-opened office and yard facility will enable Thunder Cranes to more effectively serve the UAE and Middle East moving forwards.

Dinesh Arumugam, CEO of Thunder Cranes, said, “As a market-leading provider of portable-modular offshore rental cranes, Thunder Cranes is committed to helping customers in the UAE and across the region with cost-effective and efficient lifting solutions to support offshore projects.”

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has announced a US$1.17bn contract for the hire of thirteen self-propelled jack up barges to drive offshore operational efficiencies and support the expansion of its crude oil production capacity to five million barrels per day (mmbpd) by 2030.

The five year contract was awarded by ADNOC Offshore to ADNOC Logistics and Services (ADNOC L&S). Over 80% of the award value will flow back into the UAE’s economy under ADNOC’s In-Country Value (ICV) programme, supporting local economic growth and diversification.

The 13 self-propelled jack up barges are multi-purpose assets that enable rig-less operations and maintenance with single point responsibility proved by ADNOC L&S, enabling efficiencies. The barges, which will be deployed across ADNOC’s offshore fields, are equipped to support a wide scope of operations, including project work, maintenance and accommodation.

Ahmad Saqer Al Suwaidi, ADNOC Offshore CEO, said, “This significant award to ADNOC L&S will help deliver our production capacity expansion in the offshore and directly support ADNOC’s strategic growth objective of 5 million barrels of oil production capacity by 2030. ADNOC L&S have a proven track record in the industry and their best in class expertise, together with the ready availability of the self-propelled jack up barges, will help us drive efficiencies and flexibility while cementing ADNOC’s position as a leading low cost and low carbon energy producer. Critically, the award enables very high ICV, which can stimulate new business opportunities to support the growth and diversification of UAE’s economy.”

Speaking on the contract, Captain Abdulkareem Al Masabi, ADNOC L&S CEO, said, “We are extremely proud to continue the decade’s long relationship between ADNOC Offshore and ADNOC L&S. We are committed to continuing to seize growth opportunities and deliver more value to ADNOC and this announcement is another milestone in that journey.”

The self-propelled jack up barges will be hired along with manpower and equipment. The barges will be utilised for rig-less well intervention and pre- and post-drilling operations, as well as for topside maintenance and integrity restoration activities at our offshore assets.

All requirements of the services have been unified in line with ADNOC’s approach of centralising procurement and operational logistics management. This provides ADNOC Offshore and its strategic partners with operational flexibility while enabling cost efficiencies and single point responsibility by ADNOC L&S.

The award underpins the continued investment and development at ADNOC Offshore and ensures the responsible acceleration of growth and greater value for the UAE, ADNOC and its strategic partners.