Feb 13, 2004Commentary, 1/2, 2004Oil and Gas Econ 101
The oil and gas industry, like any other industry, is at the mercy of the marketplace. And markets are typically reactive. That is to say, all the people who make up the market tend to collectively react to various stimuli. We most often track these reactions with line charts, which provide the sensation of being up-to-the-minute when it comes to market trends (especially when they’re updated every 15 minutes on the Web). It’s like strapping a lie detector to the market and following the jumping, jagged line to see just how the market’s reacting to current events. Bar charts can be interesting for comparison and pie charts are great for expressing parts of a whole, but line charts, often accompanied by negative or positive percentages, are what it takes to appease investors.
From the Editor: Hocus FocusFeb 13, 2004 It’s not possible to think about the entire global oil and gas industry concretely. It’s just too big – there’s too much for the mind to take in all at once.You have to focus – to break through the abstract and move down towards the industry’s component parts. Even then, the industry’s so large, so ubiquitous, that it’s not an easy task to decide just where to aim your focus. We think we’ve come up with a constructive approach. So in addition to our usual thematic focal points,we have introduced with this issue our new country focus sections, in which we concentrate on our North Sea neighbours’ involvement in the industry.
Cross Border Collaboration Through IntegrationFeb 12, 2004 The small businesses play a far more important role to our economies than before. In particular this relates to technology companies. Springboard UK is an initiative aimed to meet the demands of the small and medium sized technology companies (SMEs), to become active players in the global market. By Hans Peter Christophersen.
Cutting Costs With TitaniumFeb 12, 2004 Corrosion-resistant, high-strength titanium has an aura. One thinks of aerospace and other high-tech industries, yet titanium’s strength and light weight, combined with its elasticity and corrosion resistance make it an excellent choice for long-term cost savings in offshore industries. Permascand, a high-tech company with a strong track record, began its experience with titanium in 1972 with the introduction of dimensionally stable anodes (DSA®) for the chlor-alkali industry.
ALIVE: An Autonomous Light Intervention VehicleFeb 12, 2004 With the growing trend to develop deep and ultra-deep fields, the offshore oil and gas industry is increasingly demanding tools for cost-effective, reliable exploitation and maintenance of subsea equipment. Over the past decades, ROVs and ROTs have proven to be very efficient and versatile. These vehicles have become more sophisticated; however, they still require a great amount of electrical energy as well as constant, real-time supervision/control by highly trained operators. Support vessels are therefore clearly the primary part of operating expenditures (OPEX) for inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) of deepwater field, and the only way to suppress them is to remove the intervention vehicle’s umbilical, that is to turn ROVs into Intervention-AUVs (I-AUV). By Pierre Marty.
LOGIC – A Success StoryFeb 12, 2004 Following a collapse in oil price in the late nineties, which made many of the UK oil/gas fields potentially uneconomic, a senior level joint industry/Government group was formed – the Oil & Gas Industry Task Force (Now called PILOT). In 1999, this group realised that an independent industry organisation was needed in order to dramatically improve efficiency in the key areas of Supply Chain and pan-industry collaboration. This body became LOGIC and with initial funding from the DTI and five Trade Associations, started work in early 2000. By Chris Freeman.
German Marine and Offshore Equipment – A Driving Force in Technology and Cost EfficiencyFeb 12, 2004 Germany, one of the largest exporters of high-tech marine and offshore equipment, has been a reliable partner of the worldwide shipping and offshore industry for many years. In the field of high sophisticated vessels and offshore systems the German equipment companies hold an especially strong position in the world market, not only for engines and propulsion, but also for deck machinery, pumping and processing systems, environmental technologies and in many other fields. By Hauke Viktor Schlegel.
Internet: Amazon’s Digital DreamFeb 12, 2004 Jeff Bezos shares an idea with a few other idealists: He wants to get every written word in the world online, in a vast digital library. So far he has assembled 120,000 written works. His goals are simple: To create the world’s biggest searchable digital bookstore. And to make a bundle of money in the process. By Erlend Gram Simonsen.
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