Sub-sea engineering is an area of engineering that deals with how to solve the problems of getting the oil out from the earth that is under the water. You put a lot of equipment and there is a way the equipment work. The water depth is very deep, about 1,500 meters and normally speaking human beings don’t have access to the equipment on the sea-bed. Sub-sea engineering deals with how we can control these equipment and still get our oil and gas out of the reservoir up to the host facilities.

“Interestingly, foreign markets want corporate governance. They want to see equity as well. In Canada’s oil and gas industry, the average debt to equity ratio is $1 of debt per equity. In the US, the average is 97 cents of debt per dollar of equity. But in Nigeria, it is slightly above $2 of debt per equity. This makes the banking industry vulnerable to the oil and gas industry.

Oil and gas firms that borrowed huge amount of money at high interest rates from financial institutions in the country would be forced to relinquish some of their stakes to the banks if they hope to continue in business, Vice President, FBN Capital, Ms. Rolake Akinkugbe, has declared. Akinkugbe, in an article in: The Oil and Gas Year, warned that marginal fields’ operators that are yet to commence production on their fields will be the worst affected.

A Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has directed parties in the suit filed by an indigenous oil service company, Arco Group Plc against Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited, NAOC, to maintain status quo pending the determination of the applications before it. Justice Lambo Akanbi’s order was sequel to an oral application by the lead counsel to Arco, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, asking the court to prevail on parties from doing anything that would jeopardise the case.

As many as 13 operational challenges have been identified as requiring urgent attention by the new President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration, if it is to reverse the current downturn bedeviling Nigeria’s petroleum sector Among them are incoherent joint venture, JV, and production sharing contract, PSC, arrangements; crude oil theft; pipeline vandalism; low level crude oil exploration; mismanagement of crude swap arrangement; and absence of a coherent policy guiding allocation and transfer of oil blocks.

Five years ago, the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content, NOGIC Act, came into force with the sole objectives to not only encouraging the participation of more Nigerians in the petroleum industry, but also increasing the c ontribution of the industry to the nation’s gross domestic product, GDP. Sebastine Obasi sought to find out how well these lofty objective have been realised and how the law can be strengthened to achieve better results for the benefit of all.

Part of the ways the petroleum industry can overcome current crises facing it is through government’s favourable policies and greater collaboration between government and operators, Chairman, Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria, PETAN, Mr. Emeka Ene, tells Sweetcrude Editor, Clara Nwachukwu in this interview

As part of its commitment to developing the Nigerian technical workforce, FMC Technologies Inc. has announced a partnership programme with the University of Port Harcourt, UniPort, to create the first Master of Science degree in Subsea Engineering in Nigeria.

In the year since the energy industry last gathered for its big annual confab in Houston, prices for oil and natural gas took a dive that few, if anyone, saw coming.

Nigerian energy firms have borrowed about N503.674 billion from Diamond Bank Plc over the last two years between 2013 and 2014 to finance their operations.