ExxonMobil and SABIC announced that their joint venture, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures located near Corpus Christi, Texas, has reached mechanical completion of a monoethylene glycol unit and two polyethylene units. Project startup is expected to begin ahead of schedule, likely in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Shell Offshore Inc., a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, announces the final investment decision (FID) for Whale, a deep-water development in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico that features a 99% replicated hull and an 80% replication of the topsides from our Vito project.

Enteq Upstream (Enteq), the oilfield services technology and equipment supplier, announces the appointment of Suki Gill to Business Development Vice-President.

Shell Trinidad and Tobago (through BG International, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc) has announced that production has started on Block 5C in the East Coast Marine Area (ECMA) in Trinidad and Tobago. This marks a significant milestone in the delivery of gas both domestically and internationally through Atlantic LNG.

JP Morgan emerged as the top financial adviser for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by both value and volume in the oil & gas sector for H1 2021, having advised on 18 deals worth US$66.7bn. A total of 802 M&A deals were announced in the sector during H1 2021, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

bp has formed an exclusive consultancy agreement with Quaybridge, a leading UK-based renewables consultancy with global expertise in offshore wind. The two will work together to advance bp’s global offshore wind portfolio as part of its zero-carbon growth strategy, and accelerate the building of in-house offshore wind knowledge for bp.

North Star Renewables has created a new senior leadership role to oversee the company’s service offshore vessel (SOV) fleet, specifically designed to support the growing requirement for these specialist vessels within the offshore wind industry. The sector is set to boom over the next five years and attract more than £60 billion in investments.

Coretrax, the global well integrity and production optimization leader, has strengthened its senior leadership team and moved to new regional headquarters as the business gears up for further growth.

Wellesley Petroleum AS and Equinor Energy AS have signed a Sale and Purchase Agreement covering several development assets on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The transaction is as follows:

Spanish shipbuilder Navantia has contracted Damen Marine Components (DMC) for a series of rudders and steering gear systems. The equipment is for five vessels that Navantia is constructing for Armada Española – the Spanish Navy.

Jan De Nul Group’s Cable Laying Vessel Willem de Vlamingh has successfully installed the four export cables with a total length of 34 km on the 376MW Formosa 2 offshore wind farm in Taiwan. This milestone marks the next step in the development of the Formosa 2 Offshore Wind Farm.

French dams and bridges inspection specialist, IDCBTP, has chosen a Saab Seaeye Falcon for detailed infrastructure examination.

Malaysia is expected to contribute about 12% or 3.1 billion cubic feet (bcf) of global natural gas production in 2025 from key offshore planned and announced projects (new-build projects) that are expected to start operations between 2021 and 2025, according to GlobalData.

The Society for Underwater Technology (SUT), The Hydrographic Society in Scotland (THSIS) and The International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) are jointly holding their annual online seminar in November 2021, with the theme ‘Smart Operations: Driving a Lower Carbon Future’.

Project partners RWE, Shell, Gasunie and Equinor signed a declaration of intent to further intensify their collaboration on the AquaSector project - the vision of the first large-scale German offshore hydrogen park. The project aims to demonstrate that in Germany offshore based hydrogen production enables an efficient, cost-effective and sustainable way to produce green hydrogen.

CGG and PGS have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a view to combining their seismic multi-client products and technical capabilities applied to the Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) industry.