Aker BP ASA has extended its alliance agreement with SLB (Schlumberger Limited) and Stimwell Services Ltd. for another five years. The alliance formed in 2019 has supported Aker BP’s operated assets in meeting production targets. Aker BP said in a media release the alliance will work on further accelerating and boosting oil production. The alliance has established new standards for safe, efficient, and cost-effective operations through collaboration, digitalization, and innovative technology, according to Aker BP. Key achievements include simultaneous operations with jack-up rigs, a decreased backlog of locked-in barrels, and the first-ever autonomous intervention operation globally. Currently, both planning and execution utilize digital workflows, leading to enhanced productivity, reduced risk, and higher success rates, the company said. “Strategic partnerships are essential to shaping the future of our industry. At Aker BP, we remain committed to the alliance model, which creates value through long-term collaboration. It enables us to increase productivity, maintain world-class performance, and deliver oil and gas with low cost and low emissions. This is how we position ourselves as the E&P company of the future”, Aker BP CEO Karl Johnny Hersvik said. The alliance strategy aims to transform offshore well intervention.  Over the next five years, the partners aim to deliver top-quartile performance while developing future-proof capabilities, enhancing digital integration between subsurface and operations, expanding Aker BP’s Integrated Operations Centre for remote operations, and accelerating new technology deployment, Aker BP added. Furthermore, the alliance will focus on bringing wells onstream across Aker BP’s projects, using a newly upgraded stimulation vessel to optimize the Valhall PWP wells, contributing significantly to future production. “Increasing production and recovery from maturing assets is a top priority across the industry, and this alliance demonstrates how we can drive progress together through the power of partnership. The complex challenges facing our industry will increasingly

BP chairman Helge Lund has announced his plans to step down from his position. The company’s board of directors has initiated a succession process to select a new chair, with the succession process being led by Amanda Blanc in her capacity as senior independent director. Although a timeline for Lund’s resignation was not established, BP said it would most likely be during 2026. Until then, Lund will work with the successful candidate for his replacement to ensure an orderly transition ahead of taking on the role of chair. Whilst this succession process progresses, the board’s focus will remain on overseeing management’s delivery of the new strategy and this will continue to be their key priority under the new chair. Lund said: “Having fundamentally reset our strategy, BP’s focus now is on delivering the strategy at pace, improving performance and growing shareholder value. “Now is the right time to start the process to find my successor and enable an orderly and seamless handover. The board and I are committed to supporting Murray and his team, and to overseeing bp’s delivery of its strategic and financial objectives as we set out in our recent Capital Markets Update.” Lund has held the position of BP chairman since 2019, having served with three CEOs – Bob Dudley, Bernard Looney, and the current chief executive Murray Auchincloss. His last few years as chairman have been marked by BP committing, then rowing back on its climate commitments. Amid tighter economic conditions, BP’s investors have been looking for the company to refocus on its core oil and gas operations to boost revenues and share prices. This includes selling its lubricants business Castrol and divesting 50% of its solar business Lightsource BP. Amanda Blanc added: “We are starting a comprehensive search to identify chair candidates with the credibility

Norwegian ocean services provider DeepOcean will support Vattenfall’s European offshore wind farms with operations and maintenance on subsea cables. Under a new series of framework agreements, DeepOcean will provide a range of services, including project management, engineering, pre-installation surveys, offshore transportation of cables, trenching, cable installation and jointing, termination and testing, post-installation surveys, plus recovery and disposal of damaged cables. The deals are valid for four years and cover Vattenfall’s operating assets in Denmark, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Vattenfall’s UK offshore wind farms include three projects in Kent, Thanet, Kentish Flats and Kentish Flats Extension, the Ormonde offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea, and the Aberdeen offshore wind farm. In addition, the company is part of the Muir Mhòr floating project, along with Fred Olsen Seawind, which will be located off the east coast of Scotland. DeepOcean CEO Øyvind Mikaelsen said: “We welcome the opportunity to support Vattenfall’s generation of renewable energy through this framework agreements. We have over 25 years’ experience in subsea installation and inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) work.” DeepOcean, which has a branch in Aberdeen, will utilise its personnel in Norway and the UK to perform the work. The company added that a first call-off under the agreement has already been done, with DeepOcean performing O&M work at an unspecified one of Vattenfall’s European offshore wind farm. The group mobilised the subsea vessel Olympic Ares, which was converted with cable lay equipment and a jet trencher onboard, for the scope and future offshore renewables assignments. Vattenfall head of generation Pavlo Malyshenko added: “With a substantial asset base in offshore wind and a promising long-term project pipeline, we have historically enjoyed strong relationships with our suppliers and industry. “This partnership with DeepOcean aligns with our mission to deliver reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions

The global energy landscape continues to shift towards sustainability and clean energy. However, recent international and local geopolitical events are changing the dynamic, which is leading to a change in M&A activity.   About partnership content Some Energy Voice online content is funded by outside parties. The revenue from this helps to sustain our independent news gathering. You will always know if you are reading paid-for material as it will be clearly labelled as “Partnership” on the site and on social media channels, This can take two different forms. “Presented by”This means the content has been paid for and produced by the named advertiser. “In partnership with”This means the content has been paid for and approved by the named advertiser but written and edited by our own commercial content team. Adam Maitland, managing director and head of deals at Hutcheon Mearns, noted: “We have witnessed a sustained period of change across the M&A market in the OFS (oilfield services) and wider energy spectrum. The buyer landscape has fundamentally changed, with a re-routing of capital towards transitional services and technologies. “This has left the deals environment in a slightly strange place – a much smaller and more disciplined buyer pool resulting in pressure on valuations, deal structures and ultimately deal deliverability. “But as with any environment, timing is everything. Transitional energy is here but the economics are pushing to the right. Couple that with a complex and changing international arena and it’s resulting in a softening of oil and gas headwinds. “And rightly so – we cannot transition without oil and gas, a stable political regime. The recent announcement by the government that Jackdaw and Rosebank will proceed is telling in itself. “Some buyers and investors are now re-looking at more traditional OFS players. Some of this is value led. Lower

A man working in the North Sea left the oil and gas industry due to a lack of career certainty, Anasuria Operating Company (AOC) boss Richard Beatie told Energy Voice. Speaking of the man whose picture is still framed in AOC’s Aberdeen office, Beatie said: “This was one of our great guys, there he is in his mid-thirties, he’d been on the asset since he left school, basically, and went to college and came on. “He loved the asset, loved the job, but was at that point where he started to think ‘I’m in my thirties now, I don’t know if there is a future for me in the oil and gas industry’ and he actually left the oil and gas industry to move into another industry.” According to the Anasuria boss, the man left the North Sea with the mindset that “he’s young enough now that maybe he can reset his career and he still has long enough to progress in that.” Beatie said that the story was “heartbreaking” despite the young man’s departure from AOC and life in the North Sea being “amicable”. “He feels that there’s no longevity for him, not in the asset because he feels like he could stay with us for another 10 years, or whatever, but then what? “He didn’t want in 10 or 15 years time, so okay, he’s 35, but he didn’t want to say at 50, where’s the industry going to be? So, he wanted to get ahead of it.” This was the first example of someone leaving oil and gas for this reason that Beatie saw; however, “we are starting to see people looking to that,” he warned. ‘I’m worrying that I might not have a job for the duration of my working life’ © Supplied by –The Anasuria

“The writing is on the wall for the North Sea,” observed Amjad Bseisu, chief executive of operator EnQuest. Mergers such as that announced by Shell and Equinor and moves by North American firms Apache and Canadian Natural Resources (CNRL) to decommission their assets early and go back home represent a “pull back” from the basin, he said, as a result of the UK’s hostile fiscal environment. Bseisu was speaking the same day north sea rival Repsol revealed it was also joining the mania for mergers and acquisitions. The Madrid-headquartered firm announced it would be putting its UKCS assets into a new joint venture with Neo Energy, a small North Sea operator owned by Norwegian private equity firm, HitecVision. The new entity will be called Neo Next and will be 45% owned by Repsol and 55% owned by Neo. The tie up is yet another example of the tectonic shifts taking place in the North Sea as oil and gas producers grapple with attacks on fiscal, political and regulatory fronts: the Energy Profits Levy (EPL), the UK ban on new drilling and licensing and the long, fallow pause on guidance on how to assess emissions from of oil and gas used by consumers – known as “scope 3”. © BloombergA logo on the roof of a Repsol gas station in the Zona Franca district of Barcelona, Spain. The Repsol / Neo vehicle is the third major proposed merger after the so-called “Shequinor” deal, which will be the joint owner of the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, and last year’s £754 million marriage of Israel’s Ithaca and Italy’s Eni. A fourth – which is set to be either confirmed or scrapped in coming days – is Serica’s plan to combine with EnQuest, which Bseisu declined to speak about before it was officially struck.