Tuesday, 11 August 2026

Valaris has taken more than USD 160 million in fresh rig contracts and extensions, Offshore Magazine reported.

Jackup work offshore the UK and Poland sits in the award package. So does a two-well exploration program in the Gulf of Mexico. The third piece is a North Sea decommissioning campaign covering 41 wells.

That decommissioning job runs on VALARIS 248 in the UK North Sea, Offshore Magazine reported. The 41-well plug and abandonment (P&A) work starts in mid-2027. Its likely duration is 1,080 days.

The contractor's total backlog stood at USD 4.6 billion as of August 5, per the latest Valaris fleet status report cited by Offshore Magazine.

Two idle jackups left the fleet. Valaris closed the sales of VALARIS 104 and VALARIS 109 for USD 74 million, according to Offshore Magazine, after roughly six years stacked.

Valaris said its pending business combination with Transocean remains on track to close in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve dropped below 300 million barrels on Monday, its first reading under that mark since 1983, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The drawdown follows sustained withdrawals since the start of the US-Iran war. Semafor Net Zero reported that Washington has leaned heavily on the reserve over that period, raising concerns about depletion.

Crude markets moved in the same direction. Brent crude prices spiked after Middle East negotiations stalled, per Semafor Net Zero.

McDermott is leading a four-firm venture handling pre-final investment decision engineering on the Rovuma LNG project, with the Area 4 partners due to decide in 2026, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Alongside McDermott, the SMDC grouping brings in Saipem, Daewoo Engineering & Construction and China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation, according to the outlet.

McDermott's own workload covers the inside battery limits scope, the liquefaction modules included, run out of London and Gurgaon offices. Project management personnel go on secondment to the venture's Milan team.

Onshore, the plant is expected to run 12 modular liquefaction trains rated at 18.6 million tonnes of LNG per year, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The award comes ahead of the Area 4 investment decision expected in 2026, with start-up anticipated in 2031.

ExxonMobil Moçambique has placed an engineering contract for Rovuma LNG with SMDC, a joint venture whose members are McDermott, CPECC, Saipem and Daewoo Engineering & Construction, World Oil reported. The operator acted for the partners holding Area 4.

The development is designed around 12 modular liquefaction trains with a capacity of 18.6 million tonnes per year, according to World Oil.

Production is targeted to begin in 2031. World Oil described Rovuma LNG as ExxonMobil's largest single investment. A final investment decision on Phase 1 is expected later this year.

Three engineering centres will share the scope. McDermott will run design of the liquefaction modules and the remaining facilities inside battery limits (ISBL) from London and Gurgaon, while SMDC handles project management from Milan, World Oil reported.

Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell plc all reported heavy spring-quarter earnings while U.S. drilling activity failed to climb above last year's pace, according to Grist. Exxon Mobil pulled in USD 14.5 billion for the quarter, and Chevron booked USD 12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record.

Shell posted USD 9.8 billion, more than twice what it earned in the same period a year earlier, Grist reported.

Exxon Mobil chief executive Darren Woods framed the result as coming in spite of an operational setback. "Despite the temporary loss of approximately 10 percent of our upstream production, we delivered exceptional financial results," Woods said.

The earnings did not translate into a drilling rebound. As of June, U.S. oil drilling had only recovered to the rate recorded at the same point a year earlier, according to Baker Hughes data cited by Grist.

Grist also reported that the Trump administration agreed to pay TotalEnergies more than USD 900 million to cancel two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina.

Techouse has finished testing a compact once-through steam generator (COTSG) built to make combined-cycle power systems workable on offshore oil and gas installations, with the potential to cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 25%, according to World Oil.

The full-scale test campaign ran at Sustainable Energy's test center in Stord, Norway, World Oil reported.

Development came out of a joint industry project supported by TotalEnergies, Equinor and SINTEF Energy Research, with innovation funding from the Norwegian Research Council.

The unit targets the gap between simple-cycle turbines and combined-cycle configurations offshore, where deck space and weight normally rule out conventional heat-recovery equipment. Recovering exhaust heat to raise steam allows a platform to produce the same electrical output from less fuel, which is the mechanism behind the 25% figure cited by World Oil.

Techouse plans a commercial launch of the COTSG later in 2026, World Oil said.

The company also intends to examine integrating the generator and its associated infrastructure with carbon capture systems on offshore platforms. That pairing matters because capture equipment draws steam and power of its own, and a platform running simple-cycle turbines has limited headroom to supply it.

The backer list places two of the largest offshore operators alongside a research institute in the same project. Both companies operate producing installations whose power generation sits inside their direct emissions accounts, making turbine efficiency one of the few levers available on an existing platform without shutting it in.

Baker Hughes has signed a multi-year contract with Kuwait Oil Company to develop and deploy technologies intended to improve upstream production performance and efficiency in Kuwait, according to World Oil.

World Oil reported that the agreement commits Baker Hughes to set up a dedicated research and technology development center in Kuwait.

The company will also act as a technology collaborator for KOC's Ahmadi Innovation Valley, an in-country research and innovation initiative that World Oil described as focused on the operator's oil and gas development priorities.

Baker Hughes has supplied upstream energy technology and services in Kuwait for more than four decades, per World Oil.