Category Archives: Offshore

Denmark and Poland are refusing to let companies registered in offshore tax havens access financial aid from their coronavirus bailout packages.

The Danish finance ministry on Saturday extended its bailout program into July but stressed that firms based in tax havens would no longer be covered.

"Companies seeking compensation after the extension of the schemes must pay the tax to which they are liable under international agreements and national rules," a translation of the statement said.

"Companies based on tax havens in accordance with EU guidelines cannot receive compensation, insofar as it is possible to cut them off under EU law and any other international obligations."

Poland took similar measureson April 8. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said large companies wanting a chunk of a roughly $6 billion bailout fund must pay domestic business taxes.

"Let's end tax havens, which are the bane of modern economies," he added.

A bench roped off by the police in London. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

Tax havens are countries that have low or no business taxes. Companies that officially register themselves at addresses in them often avoid paying business taxes to the countries in which they operate.

Among the most famous havens are Gibraltar, the Bahamas, Andorra, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Panama.

It is unclear whether other European nations will follow the example of Denmark and Poland, but it is unlikely that authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg will do so. All four have provisions making them attractive to businesses that also allow them to be registered offshore.

"Together, they are responsible for half of the world's corporate tax avoidance risks," the Tax Justice Network said last year.

"Companies that seek to dodge their obligations to broader society by cutting their tax bills shouldn't expect to get bailed out when things go wrong," Robert Palmer, the executive director at Tax Justice UK, told Business Insider.

"The UK government should seriously look at copying Denmark's approach. Any bailout needs to come with conditions to ensure good business behaviour."

A spokeswoman for Her Majesty's Treasury told Business Insider: "Obviously we've set up schemes at pace, and they are designed to support jobs in Britain."

"Sometimes that will involve foreign companies who employ people in the UK for example. But we are looking into the specific point on tax havens where as you know we have already taken considerable action."

The British Virgin Islands. wikimediacommons/Henry A-W

Some industries are famous for making the most of offshore tax breaks most notably the cruise industry, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Line, which make up more than two-thirds of the industry, are formally registered in Panama, Liberia, and Bermuda.

Several cruise ships have played host to major coronavirus outbreaks while at sea, drawing international media attention.

Cruise operators had called on the US government for a bailout and hoped the Senate's $2 trillion relief bill would provide a lifeline. However, it stipulated that companies must be "created or organized" in the US, and the Cruise Lines International Association told The Washington Post on March 26 that major cruise lines would be unable to get aid.

The cruise ship Diamond Princess anchored in Yokohama, Japan, on February 7. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Experts and campaigners in several nations have called on governments to go after offshore funds, saying that claiming these taxes is vital to weathering the financial crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

"Sustainable, robust public responses to shocks require administrative capacity and tax resources," Rasmus Corlin Christensen, a research associate at the International Centre for Tax and Development, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists earlier this month.

"Tax avoidance and global tax competition, more broadly, strain the ability of countries to raise those resources."

Fabio Fazio, a prominent Italian broadcaster, said tax avoiders were complicit in deaths from the virus.

A doctor in a lounge after completing a round of examinations during a night shift in his ward in the COVID-19 section of the Maggiore Hospital in Parma, Italy, on April 8. Associated Press

"It has become evident that those who do not pay their taxes are not only guilty of a crime, but of murder: if the beds and the respirators are not there they are partly to blame," he wrote in an article for La Repubblica last month.

Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of The Guardian, said the UK government should force companies with offshore tax breaks to relinquish them in exchange for government aid.

"We're starkly realising our public services are drastically underfunded. So here's a suggestion: before any company receives a penny in public Covid-19 support they must first pledge to scrap any artificial tax avoidance arrangements in future," he tweeted on March 22.

"A huge number of corporations engineer ways of avoiding putting any tax the way of our hospitals & other essential services," he added.

This story was edited shortly after publication to clarify the job description of Rasmus Corlin Christensen. He is a research associate, not a campaigner.

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Denmark and Poland are refusing to bail out companies registered in offshore tax havens - Business Insider - Business Insider

Half of small offshore captive IT centres owned by western multinationals could be mopped up by large suppliers or brought home as they struggle to cope with life with Covid-19.

A combination of business volumes dropping, challenges setting up staff to work from home and the increasing draw of automation could create the right conditions for businesses to sell off their offshore operations or integrate them with other operations.

There are thousands of IT delivery centres in locations where costs are low and IT skills are abundant. These are mainly in India and are often fully owned, or co-owned with local suppliers, by large global companies as well as mid-sized western businesses.

According to outsourcing advisory ISG, about 40% of these centres are categorised as small, with fewer than 500 people.

ISG said a lack of scale and logistical capabilities meant these centres had not been able to respond quickly to the challenges brought by the Covid-19 coronavirus, which has forced staff to stay at home.

The Indian government put its 1.3 billion population inlockdown on 24 March, meaning everyone was to stay at home. It has since relaxed this for certain types of companies, including IT service providers, which are now permitted to have 50% of staff in work.

Large suppliers in India, such as Tata Consultancy Services, have used their expertise to scale up home working in response. In Tatas case, it has gone from having about 40% set up to work securely from home before the pandemic, to 90% today.

Smaller centres are struggling, however, according to ISG. Smaller providers and smaller captive centres have struggled with the global work-from-home orders, said Stanton Jones, director and principal analyst at ISG.

We are seeing backlogs develop at many of our clients in critical areas that are often run out of centres like mortgage processing for banks, he added.

Smaller providers and smaller captive centres have struggled with the global work-from-home orders. We are seeing backlogs develop at many of our clients Stanton Jones, ISG

Jones said this would create the right environment for businesses to sell off their offshore centres. We believe we will soon see an increased focus on monetisation of these centres as a way to beef up operational resiliency and to infuse much-needed cash, he added.

The large IT service providers looking to expand their portfolios are likely to be the potential acquirers. We anticipatepossibly half of all global captives with fewer than 500 people being repatriated or acquired, said Jones.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) technology, to replace full-time equivalent staff offshore, could accelerate this consolidation, according to ISG.We will likely see a switch from labour arbitrage strategies to microservices, artificial intelligence and RPA solutions to address the business resilience challenges, it said.

According to a study by EY, over a third of businesses accelerated their automation strategies when the extend of the disruption, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, became clear.

The sudden and unexpected nature of Covid-19 has compelled executives to re-evaluate operating models. While building agility and resilience have been dominant themes for much of the past decade, the unique nature of the current situation has left many companies unprepared. According to EY, 36% of businesses are acceleratinginvestment in automation, while 41% are re-evaluating their automation plans.

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Coronavirus: Pandemic will see consolidation of offshore captive centres - ComputerWeekly.com

The Bayonne Fire Department rescues a kayaker.

The Bayonne Fire Department rescues a kayaker.

While many choose to stay at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some residents have other plans. For one man, that meant kayaking, unsuccessfully, in the Hudson River.

According to Fire Chief Keith Weaver, members of the Bayonne Fire Department (BFD) responded to reports of a kayaker in distress in the waters off the city on April 18.

Responding firefighters found a man clinging to his kayak in the middle of the inlet that separates the peninsula at the former Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne (MOTBY) and the LeFante Way Shopping Plaza. At the scene, first responders communicated with the stranded kayaker using a bullhorn and determined that he was wearing a life vest.

The victim was approximately 100 yards from either shore and was unreachable except by boat, Weaver said. The BFD vessel successfully reached the man and pulled him to safety.

All hands on deck!

The victim was transported by the BFD Marine unit to the United States Coast Guard station for further transportation. At the Coast Guard station, the conscious and alert man was met and treated by McCabe Ambulance EMTs who subsequently transported the him to Bayonne Medical Center. No further information has been released regarding the mans condition.

The Bayonne Police Department, McCabe Ambulance, New York Police Department Marine and Aviation units, Port Authority Police, and Bayonne Office of Emergency Management all responded, according to Weaver.

On the scene, Weaver said hes happy that the incident ended well.

Far too often, people run into trouble in the rough waters around Bayonne, but due to the quick action of our Fire Department and other first responders, this young man will be able to tell this story, Weaver said. This is a great example of how wearing a life vest prevented a tragedy.

Weaver said that everyone should always wear a life vest while on the water.

Meanwhile, Mayor James Davis reminded residents on an April 18 COVID-19 update to continue to follow Gov. Phil Murphys stay-at-home order to curtail the spread of the pandemic.

And the likelihood of a water rescue?

For updates on this and other stories, check http://www.hudsonreporter.com and follow us on Twitter @hudson_reporter. Daniel Israel can be reached at disrael@hudsonreporter.com.

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Kayaker rescued offshore near MOTBY - The Hudson Reporter

ABERDEEN, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KNOT Offshore Partners LP (NYSE:KNOP) (the Partnership or KNOT Offshore Partners)

Torill Knutsen

The Partnership announced today that Eni Trading and Shipping S.p.A. (Eni) exercised two of its one-year options to extend the time charter of the Torill Knutsen until November 2022. In connection with the early exercise by Eni of its options, the Partnership has granted Eni a further option to extend the time charter by one additional one-year period. Eni now has the option to extend the time charter by two one-year periods until November 2024.

Gary Chapman, CEO, said This early declaration and agreement with Eni further strengthens the Partnerships contracted revenue streams and validates our belief that our vessels remain an essential part of our customers supply chains, even in these volatile times. While other vessel charters will naturally come up for renewal in the coming years, we believe that our strategy, our industry-leading position and forecast demand and supply for shuttle tankers leave us very well-placed, as demonstrated by this announcement today.

Change to the Board

The Partnership also announced that its general partner has appointed Mr. Junya Omoto to replace Mr. Takuji Banno on the Partnerships Board of Directors, effective April 1, 2020.

Mr. Omoto has served as the General Manager, Offshore Business Group, for Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) since April 1, 2020 and from 2016 was previously Deputy General Manager of NYKs Offshore Business Group. Mr. Omoto joined NYK in 1993 and until 2006 he served in the Container and Logistics divisions in Japan and Hong Kong. In 2007, Mr. Omoto joined the Petroleum group and from 2010 he acted as Manager of the LNG Group. Mr. Omoto graduated from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law.

About KNOT Offshore Partners LP

KNOT Offshore Partners LP owns, operates and acquires shuttle tankers under long-term charters in the offshore oil production regions of the North Sea and Brazil. KNOT Offshore Partners LP is structured as a publicly traded master limited partnership. KNOT Offshore Partners LPs common units trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KNOP.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements concerning future events and KNOT Offshore Partners operations, performance and financial condition. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future results, performance or achievements, and may contain the words believe, anticipate, expect, estimate, project, will be, will continue, will likely result, plan, intend or words or phrases of similar meanings. These statements involve known and unknown risks and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond KNOT Offshore Partners control. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements with respect to, among other things:

All forward-looking statements included in this release are made only as of the date of this release. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for KNOT Offshore Partners to predict all of these factors. Further, KNOT Offshore Partners cannot assess the impact of each such factor on its business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to be materially different from those contained in any forward-looking statement. KNOT Offshore Partners does not intend to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in KNOT Offshore Partners expectations with respect thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

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KNOT Offshore Partners LP Announces Extension of Charter of Torill Knutsen and Change to Board - Business Wire

Offshore staff

OSLO, Norway If Brent drops to $20/bbl, 30,000 boe/d of UK offshore production would not cover marginal costs, according to Rystad Energy.

Theoretically, the production facilities could be at risk of an early shut-in, although this might not actually happen, the consultant said.

This is because most operators will want to keep facilities running even at a loss and claw back the profit back once oil prices recover. The assumption is that it is more economic to maintain the facility at a loss than to shut it down and attempt a later re-start.

However, a lower oil price would have more impact on discoveries and companies ability to proceed with final investment decisions (FIDs) for new projects.

At $30/bbl, only 34% of unsanctioned UK offshore volumes are commercial, the consultant claimed while at $20/bbl, none are financially viable.

As a result, said Sonya Boodoo, vice president of Upstream Research, we expect sanctioning activity to be low in the current price environment, not only because of the breakeven price of the projects but also because operators will tend to be cautious over the scale and pace of future capital spending commitments.

Last year UK offshore exploration rose from previous lows in 2018. Operators had indicated that activity would fall back again this year, and it now looks as if exploration activity will likely be deferred where possible, although the impact will be felt more in 2021 as most of this years scheduled wells already have contracted rigs.

As for cash flow, under an average oil price of $34/bbl in 2020 and $44 in 2021, Rystad expects most UK upstream activity to be cash-negative in 2020 with free cash flow at -$1.3 billion.

If the oil price falls to around $20/bbl, the situation will be more severe with cash flow at about -$3.4 billion. And if the present situation shows no sign of improvement, UK operators and their partners of all sizes will be forced to make deeper cuts to those already implemented.

UK players already stretched their limits and accumulated losses in the previous market downturn, so they now have very limited opportunity to absorb further reductions, Boodoo said, adding that a favorable tax regime and competitive operational costs for producing assets will sustain short-term production.

04/20/2020

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UK grappling with implications of lower oil price - Offshore Oil and Gas Magazine

(NEW ORLEANS) The new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has been confirmed in more than two dozen people working on oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard said.

While an offshore rig might seem like an unlikely place for the virus to show up, workers share close quarters and frequently touch surfaces including handrails that make it difficult to stop the spread, nola.com reported Wednesday.

As of April 8, 26 offshore workers in the Gulf had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Only seven of the 680 platforms in the Gulf had been affected at that point.

BP is among the companies that has had offshore workers test positive for the coronavirus, said spokesman Jason Ryan. The workers were already onshore when the virus was confirmed, he said, and the platform has since been cleaned and has new crew members on board.

Efforts to limit the spread of the virus on platforms appear to be working, said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association. Just 11 COVID-19 cases were detected in the last two weeks in the roughly 15,000 people who work offshore at any given time, he said Monday.

We see what we think are great results, he said. I think thats due to the seriousness and the commitment weve seen.

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Contact us at editors@time.com.

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COVID-19 Cases Confirmed on Offshore Oil Platforms in Gulf - TIME

MANILA (PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - The government is looking into a proposal to let Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) resume operations to generate funds in the fight against the Covid-19 disease, President Rodrigo Duterte's chief economic manager said on Monday (April 20).

"The evaluation is ongoing," Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said. "But let me reiterate - all of the above depends on the results of the ongoing evaluation of the trade-offs involved in the decision of maintaining the current partial lockdown or tightening it or loosening it further."

Mr Dominguez, however, said he was not in favour of lifting the national and local liquor ban despite calls from the alcohol beverage industry.

Pogos and other businesses, except for those involving essential goods and services, have been temporarily closed down amid the lockdown in Luzon and other parts of the country to contain the spread of the disease.

On Sunday (March 19), Anti-Crime and Terrorism Community Involvement and Support Partylist (ACT-CIS) Representative Eric Go Yap, chair of the House appropriations committee, called on the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor) to allow Pogos to resume their operations for tax purposes.

"In view of (exhausted) government coffers, the suspension of Pogo operations should be lifted immediately to give our tax collection a much-needed boost," Mr Yap said in a statement.

He said the country needed all the help it could get now.

"It will not harm us to have additional sources of revenue that we can use for our hungry countrymen. Lives are at stake and we need to act fast," said Mr Yap, who formerly chaired the House games and amusements committee.

Pagcor said the suspension of Pogo operations was implemented to ensure the safety of all employees and to prevent the further spread of the virus by limiting workers' movements.

But Mr Yap said there were creative solutions that Pagcor could tap.

The state-run gambling regulator should come up with guidelines stipulating dos and don'ts. It should be made clear that work from home should be allowed only if a Pogo is accredited by Pagcor, Mr Yap said.

"I honestly believe that the ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) won't be totally lifted by April 30 and there may still be a need for us to support the people next month. Where will we get the funds?" he said.

"We need to find ways to boost the collection of taxes, but it should not be at the expense of public health," the lawmaker said.

As of early this year, around 60 Pogos had been issued licences to operate by Pagcor, while 218 service providers employing over 108,000 foreigners had registered with the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Pogo licensees tap service providers to directly communicate with clients, or online gamblers outside the Philippines, mostly in China.

The government expected to collect twobillion Philippine pesos (S$56.17 million) in taxes from Pogos per month.

Last year, it earned 6.42 billion Philippine pesos in additional corporate and personal income taxes from its campaign against tax-deficient Pogos.

Mr Dominguez said tax collections in April "will be very bad", partly due to the extended deadlines for filing and paying certain taxes in light of the lockdown extension until April 30.

Over the weekend, the Department of Finance said first-quarter tax collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) not only declined, but also slid below targets as the pandemic and the resulting quarantine starting mid-March hurt domestic businesses and external trade.

The country's two largest revenue agencies collected 600.86 billion Philippine pesos in taxes and import duties from January to March, down 1.7 per cent from 611.03 billion Philippine pesos in the same period last year.

The joint BIR-BOC take as of end-March was 20.6 per cent lower than the 757.12 billion Philippine peso goal for the three-month period.

The Centre for Alcohol Research and Development (Card) Foundation Inc appealed for the lifting or easing of the liquor ban in an April 16 letter to Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez.

"If this ban continues, the industry can no longer survive - a situation that can affect a large sector of the community," the group said.

"The alcohol beverage industry bears already the agony of declining market demand due to the imposition of high excise taxes on alcohol," said Card, whose members include Absolut Distillers Inc, Emperador Distillers Inc and Ginebra San Miguel Inc.

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Coronavirus: Philippine government looking into proposal to let offshore gaming operators resume operations - The Straits Times

Dollar bonds of last-mile financiers such as IIFL Finance, Manappuram Fin, Muthoot Fin and Shriram Transport Fin rallied 11-36% from record lows in the past two-three weeks, indicating increasing appetite overseas for debt sold by Indian NBFCs.

Deutsche Bank, Varde Partners, Avenue Capital, SC Lowy, and Blackrock were among those seen negotiating secondary market deals, even as high-yield bonds from other emerging markets such as Mexico found few takers.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment; others did not reply to ETs mailed queries.

The RBIs timely and well calibrated measures have thrown a lifeline and stemmed the sell-off in dollar bonds issued by Indian companies, said Hemant Mishr, founder at Scube Fixed Income, a Singapore-based fund. Against the backdrop of an impending global recession and lingering uncertainties we see investors seeking comfort in the relative safety of bonds.

Indias central bank announced a second set of measures to boost the financing economy on Friday. These bonds had plunged as much as 50 percent, ET reported on March 27.

In the overseas dollar bond market, global distressed investors find big upside for local NBFCs, said Manish Wadhawan, CEO, Serenity Macro Partners, which deals with offshore investors. With RBI booster doses, these companies should survive the current crisis before they resume the growth journey in the next few years.

Power Finance Corp. bonds have gained 11%, trading at a little premium to face value. IIFL Finance has jumped 36%, largely erasing discounts. Manappuram, Shriram and Muthoot have seen prices jump 15-27%.

High-yield Indian NBFC papers offer 5-7%, compared with 3.5-6% for investment-grade paper.

The six-month dollar-based London Interbank Offered Rate plunged about 60 basis points to 1.13% since February.

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NBFCs bonds rally 11-36% offshore, what triggered the rally? - Economic Times

ON 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon incident tragically heralded a period of change for both the oil and gas industry and how it is regulated. While the worlds immediate attention focused on preventing the ongoing oil spill and cleaning up the environment, efforts also got underway to learn and share lessons from the incident and establish partnerships that are now helping to improve offshore operations.

Among the series of recommendations that followed, was a request for the Department of the Interior to establish an Ocean Energy Safety Institute (OESI). The OESI was established in 2013 to provide an independent organisation that could bring together stakeholders from across the offshore community. These stakeholders included the industry itself, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and other regulators, academia, and non-governmental organisations.

Forums for Dialogue have been held periodically since May 2014 to bring together these stakeholders to share their perspectives. They initially covered topics that BSEE was interested in but went on to cover interests of the wider community. Each forum also generated areas of research interest.

The forum topics included:

The second area that OESI was asked to focus on was conducting relevant collaborative research that could be accomplished by the three Tier 1 research universities: Texas A&M University, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas Austin. Based on the results of the initial Forums for Dialogue, and meetings with stakeholders across industry, government, and academia, three primary research areas emerged:

These research areas allowed for collaboration across the partner universities and resulted in papers for each topic, which can be downlaoded at https://oesi.tamu.edu/research/

The titles of these papers are:

Additionally, the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) in their final report on Deepwater Horizon recommended that OESI Conduct further study on riser gas unloading scenarios, testing, and modeling and publish a white paper containing technical guidance that communicates findings and makes recommendations for industry safety improvements.

In a joint research effort, facilitated by OESI, Texas A&M University, and Louisiana State University are studying Experiments on Multiphase Flow of Live Muds in a Full-Scale Wellbore with Distributed Sensing for Kick and Gas-in-riser Detection/Mitigation. This joint research is separately funded by the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program. The results of this research are expected to be available in early 2021. However, the new capabilities and the impacts of this project are already reaching industry.

Through participation in key industry subcommittees and communication through technical conferences and technical publications, we have helped increase understanding across stakeholders. Additionally, by pursuing fundamental questions surrounding key issues like multiphase flow in the annuli, high temperature high pressure (HTHP) mud properties, and solubility kinetics, safer offshore operations will be strengthened. As a welcome side-effect, the project is also spawning translational projects that are linking oil and gas with biomedical applications. The technologies for visualisation of gas flows in rheological fluids, hydraulic system dynamics characterisation, fiber optics sensing technologies, and gas solubility kinetics all have application to the medical field as well as the oil and gas industry.

These dialogue opportunities, and specific areas of research allowed OESI to look to the future of research requirements for continued improvement in offshore safety. While significant academic-based research is underway, much of the current study is the result of Deepwater Horizon findings from ten years ago. So, how do we get ahead of the issues that are and will arise in future offshore operations?

To help meet this need, OESI has published a 21st Century Ocean Energy Research Roadmap. The roadmap is based on work with multiple offshore industry groups, including the Research Partnership for a Secure Energy America (RPSEA), the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the Gulf Research Program, the Center for Offshore Safety (COS). Current and future research needs are discussed and grouped into the following subject areas:

The purpose of developing the roadmap and identifying areas of future capability development was to lay out a plan, to inform the way ahead for research opportunities, for OESI and others. Ultimately, ensuring that the scarce resources put toward research are focused into areas that will further increase safer operations offshore; and not just push an academic agenda.

While a number of areas have been identified by the roadmap, one area stood out that OESI could help move forward within their budget constraints. The need to move away from reactionary measures (lagging) to proactive measures (leading) was identified in a number of the forums.

Shell is championing this work to develop a leading indicators dashboard (LID). Initially, this LID would look at a well-control system offshore, but ultimately it could be fashioned for most onshore and offshore upstream operations. The key is to map out the barriers of the system and understand what goes into the health of those barriers. A key concept for the LID is that it would look at both technical (e.g. mud pit readings) and non-technical (e.g. training status of crew) and assess the health of those system barriers and depict where the risk might be highest, and the inter-relations of those system barriers. By moving to leading indicators, this would be a step-change in how decisions are made. This project is currently in the stage of identifying the appropriate barriers and their data feeds to inform the measures of barrier health. This capability development and change in operational thinking will provide an increase in safer operations offshore and elsewhere.

Throughout the evolution of OESI, the primary focus has been to help enable safer and environmentally responsible ocean energy operations. This mission is just as valid today and into the future as when it was initially assigned. OESIs mission and its efforts will continue core to offshore operations and more importantly can be useful to the whole upstream sector. While the horizon for OESI as an organization may be limited (the cooperative agreement with BSEE that funds OESI ends in August 2020); the requirement for what OESI has brought to the offshore stakeholders does not diminish. With ever-increasing complexity of operations from the beginning of seismic operations to decommissioning of assets, there is a need to continue the dialogue, to exchange ideas and experience, and to inform the research agenda to support all stakeholders.

This article is part of series called Deepwater Horizon: a Decade On. Read the rest of the series here

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After the spill: research for safer offshore operations - The Chemical Engineer

Offshore staff

ABERDEEN, UK Oil & Gas UK (OGUK) has called on its member companies to donate spare personal protective equipment (PPE) to local boards and trusts of Britains National Health Service, care homes or charities.

Demand for PPE remains critical to the health sectors response to COVID-19 in Britain, not solely to protect staff, but also hospital patients and care home residents.

The UK offshore oil and gas industry uses PPE widely, and the association is supporting a campaign with TSG Marine to encourage companies to check their inventories of face masks, contact safety gloves, goggles, chemical suits, paper coveralls, and overshoes and either donate or lend these to those that need it most.

OGUK also acknowledged that many of its companies are doing this already with spare or legacy inventory.

04/20/2020

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UK offshore association calls for personal protective equipment donations - Offshore Oil and Gas Magazine