Baker Hughes and Norway’s Akastor have signed an agreement to start a joint venture company to provide full-service offshore drilling equipment.
The new joint venture company will combine Baker Hughes’ Subsea Drilling Systems (SDS) business and Akastor’s subsidiary, MHWirth, to provide a broad portfolio of products and services. Akastor’s share to the new company will be of 50% stake and $120m in consideration, while Baker Hughes will contribute for a 50% interest and $200m in consideration. The new joint venture company’s operations will be managed from existing offices in Houston, Texas, and Kristiansand in Norway.

Saipem and Alboran Hydrogen have signed a memorandum of understanding for the joint development and construction of five facilities for the production of green hydrogen through the electrolysis process, three of which in Italy and the other two in the Mediterranean basin. The agreement proposes, among the various possible initiatives identified, the development and creation of a green hydrogen district in Puglia, with three plants located respectively in the territories of Brindisi, Taranto and Foggia, with the involvement of the National Energy Technological District, the universities La Sapienza, Salento and the Citadel of Research in Brindisi.
The agreement also provides for the development and construction of two additional facilities in the Mediterranean basin, in Albania and Morocco respectively.

Despite expectations of oil experts and a recent price surge, OPEC and allies have decided to set aside proposals for expanding output and to keep a tight rein on production, sticking with current quotas for April with some exceptions. The OPEC+ agreed in January to keep production steady for February and March. At that time, Saudi Arabia surprised markets by pledging to cut its production by an extra 1 million barrels per day, a move that reflected unease about fragile demand. Saudi Arabia agreed on Thursday to extend its extra cut through April.

Oil giant Exxonmobil continues to refocus its portfolio and sells most of its drilling and exploration assets off the coast of the U.K. in the North Sea for more than $1 billion. Exxon has heightened its focus on other oil rich regions, including the Permian Basin in the Southwest United States. The sale relates to ExxonMobil’s interests of 14 producing fields in the North Sea which are run by Shell, Penguins, Starling, Fram, the Gannet Cluster and Shearwater. The share of production of ExxonMobil’s from these fields was approximately 38,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day last year.
The sale by Exxon of its North Sea assets first arose in 2019, and the selling price was estimated to be around twice of the number announced recently.

The new government of Draghi has extended to September 30rd the deadline for the approval of the PITESAI, the plan of the sustainable energy transition of eligible areas. The project should identify the appropriate areas to accommodate the mining research and oil extraction. Silvia Russo, spokesperson of the Committee “No Oil, Yes Renewable Energy”, believes that the new deadline is very risky, especially if there is no clear political direction behind the issue. According to her, the PITESAI plan is a priority and the Committee asks the government to accelerate the works of the “ecologic transition” and to approve the moratorium on new permits for the search and extraction of oil that territorial movements have been demanding for too many years now.

BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse and ING have recently announced to stop funding oil extraction in the Amazon area of Ecuador. For years, the forest populations have been fighting against the pollution caused by mining and oil extraction that over time has transformed parts of their ancestral lands into pools of polluting waste and poisoned the air with flaring gas. The announcement of the three credit giants seems not only a symbolic move but a first step towards a more careful business management of the environmental issue.

A deep freeze in the USA is taking a toll in the energy industry. Some of the biggest oil refineries in Texas were forced to shut down as an Arctic freeze upended energy markets and led to widespread power blackouts across the country. The deep freeze prompted the state’s electric power suppliers to impose rotating blackouts, leaving nearly 3 million homes and businesses without power. U.S. President Joe Biden has already unlocked federal assistance to Texas, which is one of the biggest gas producing countries and which produces roughly 4.6 million barrels of oil per day.

SNAM has been awarded by SEAL Awards among the world’s 50 most sustainable companies. The company has been included in CDP’s “A” list of companies most committed to the fight against climate change and committed to sustainable practices globally. Snam plans to become carbon free by 2040. Seal Awards has announced the winners of the 2020 Seal Business Sustanability Awards on Thursday Feb. 18. According to Matt Harney, SEAL Awards’ Founder “Over the past five years, corporations have increased their investment in sustainable business practices, thereby raising the bar for ESG excellence. Our mission at SEAL is to rigorously assess and then celebrate extraordinary sustainability leadership.

The five supermajors Exxonmobil, BP, Shell, Chevron and Total recorded a combined loss of $76 billion in 2020. The downturn in the Covid-19 pandemic and the acceleration of the energy transition have created a new reality for the world’s oil and gas industry, whose production will reach the lowest peak earlier than expected. Most of this loss can be attributed to asset write-downs and write-offs: the majors have revalued their strategy to focus on energy transition and become less dependent on oil. Their combined production of oil and gas declined by almost 5%, or 0.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, in 2020 compared to the previous year.

The SGC (Southern Gas Corridor) has started delivering gas from the Caspian Sea to Italy beginning of 2021 through the TransAdriatic Pipeline. This despite some crucial nail-biting moments like the struggle with the local authorities, with the result that the price premium for Italian consumers has been eroded, long one of Western Europe’s least competitive markets. The SGC was initially expected to carry 30bn cubic m/year form the Caspian region to Central Europe. However, it now carries 16bn cubic m/year out of Azerbaijan, 10bn cubic m/year of which to Italy.