Energy

Western Power brings electricity to Australia’s fastest growing region. Fuelling that growth is costly; but the Perth Solar City programme is helping to solve the grid’s problems—and those of its customers too.

As the hub for Western Australia’s mining activity, lying close to the port of Fremantle, the city of Perth has been the recipient of a great deal of state and federal investment to ensure its infrastructure keeps pace with its strategic economic importance.

Continental Coal has announced that Ntshovelo Mining Resources, the joint venture entity that operates the Vlakvarkfontein coal mine in South Africa, has executed a coal supply agreement with the state utility company, Eskom.

The agreement is for the supply of 720,000 tonnes per annum of thermal coal of quality suitable for some of Eskom's power stations over an initial three-year period which commenced on 1 March.

Dhuruma Electricity Company is quietly and efficiently completing a large world-class power generating station in record time. It’s an interesting test case for the independent power plant model in Saudi Arabia.

Premier Oil has awarded a contract to Wood Group PSN for the delivery of integrated operations and maintenance support services to the Balmoral floating production vessel (FPV).

The contract, estimated to be worth around £250 million, will see Wood Group PSN provide managed onshore and offshore operations and maintenance services, including the management of selected procurement and logistics support.

Encana Natural Gas Inc, one of North America's largest natural gas producers, today opened the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) fueling station in Louisiana.

Located at The Relay Station in Frierson, the station will serve the fueling needs of heavy duty truck fleets, but is also open for public use (to those with an LNG vehicle and proper safety training).

Norway’s Statoil and partner ExxonMobil have made a large gas discovery in the Zafarani exploration well offshore Tanzania. 

Logging results have shown what Statoil is calling a “high impact discovery”, so far proving up to five trillion cubic feet of gas in-place.

The well has encountered 120 metres of excellent quality reservoir with high porosity and high permeability, Statoil said. The gas-water contact has not been established and drilling operations are ongoing.

Shell Exploration & Production (Shell Bidco) has made an offer of £992.4 million for East Africa-focused Cove Energy.

UK-based Cove's primary asset is its 8.5 per cent stake in the Rovuma Offshore Area 1 in Mozambique, where operator Anadarko has found over 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Rovuma offshore basin is a frontier exploration area, holding large resources of natural gas reserves suitable for LNG projects.

Wood Group PSN has been awarded a contract extension from Shell in the UK to deliver midstream engineering and construction services to the St Fergus and Mossmoran gas plants.

The £75 million, two-year contract is effective from April 2012 and includes an option for a further two-year extension. The award is a continuation of the previous contract awarded to Wood Group in 2007.

US-based Select Energy Services has entered the Canadian market with the completion of its purchase of WTR Transfer Services Ltd. (WTR).

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Select Energy Services provides engineered water solutions to the oil and gas industry, and well-site services to energy producers.

WTR performs water transfer services for the shale drilling industry in western Canada, specializing in high volume water transfer through a "no leak" water transfer system.

National Grid and ScottishPower Transmission have awarded a contract for construction of the first ever subsea electricity link between Scotland and England & Wales.

The £1 billion contract has been awarded to Germany’s Siemens and Italian cable manufacturer Prysmian.

The major grid upgrade will increase the capacity of electricity flowing between England and Scotland by more than 2,000 megawatts, allowing new renewable energy projects to be developed in Scotland that could power three million homes.