From Aberdeen: It is most unlikely - in fact totally unlikely - that newbie Hurricane Exploration will ever see any production from its West of Shetlands Lancaster prospect (SEN, 29/17). It’s not that this is not an interesting prospect surrounded by more prospective acreage, but Hurricane does not see itself as a production operator.

At least this is the view taken by EPC Offshore headman Keith Wallace whose company is handling concept select and project management duties for Hurricane.

With all of the company expertise focussed on geoscience - more specifically geology that is best described as pre-sedimentary, ie below normal source rock - the company’s aim is to prove up the resources at this 180m WoS location and the surrounding licences and then farm out most or all of the licences.

While choosing a development scheme is of some importance - subsea wells producing either as a tieback or to some form of dp floater - the real challenge is well design and flow characteristics. A well test last year proved that there is oil and that it will flow, albeit for a short time. Part of any phased development would likely be an extended well test to ensure that there is sufficient pressure in the reservoir to ensure that it would be possible to recover the estimated 200mmbbls in reserves.

EPC which picked up a gong here as ‘subsea company of the year’ is also heavily involved in Ithaca Energy’s Greater Stella Area (29/20) development and with Premier on Catcher (29/21). And just to prove that it is not just a ‘small operator’ company, it also did concept select for Shell for the proposed Penguins redevelopment (29/14).

McDermott was one of the bigger names at the show here as it begins to re-establish itself as a subsea player in and around the North Sea sector.

In fact, it is likely that McD will be seen a lot more in these environs as it is setting up an office in London that will act as its ‘subsea centre of excellence’ - assuredly we have heard that phrase before - for its attack on the subsea and pipeline market.

This operation will be headed up by Tony Duncan, who moves over from Houston. We don’t know his name, but he has been around the industry for at least 15 years with Subsea 7, Technip and Aker Maritime.

McD which recently formed an alliance with Ocean Installer (29/20) is not due to have its new pipelay fleet in the sector for at least another year, but it will be bidding for jobs in all sectors out of the London office.

It is always interesting when a company throws down the gauntlet and states its business intentions in a big way.

Last year venture capital group Oaktree Capital Management made a big bet that Integrated Subsea Services, Iremis and Andrews Survey (29/9) could come together to form a bigger group and make an impact on the burgeoning IRM sector.

The group has now been named Harkand and brought in industry heavyweight Tom Ehret, ex-Stena, Acergy, et al, as chairman, to move things on. David Kerr, MD for Europe, told SEN that the group aims to be turning over $5bn in the IRM market in five years time.

It already has charters on a number of hulls, but will presumably face the same problem as many other companies in this sector - finding the hands to man those vessels.

And if you are wondering what ‘harkand’ means, it is one of the seven seas as mentioned in medieval literature that one crosses to get to China. It is meant to be in the vicinity of the Bay of Bengal.

It is not that the oil industry is hard-hearted, but it is not often that one hears truly socially adept comments from an executive from an oil company.

Mark Richardson from Apache Energy, after giving a rundown on his company’s impressive redevelopment successes in the North Sea, first at Forties and now at Beryl, gave this industry a little lecture on how to be good citizens. Richardson told this oilfield audience: pay your taxes on profits locally; don’t do deals with agencies that are looking for ways to avoid paying national insurance; and buy your goods and services from domestic companies.

And hire ex-military hands and train them. If he keeps this up, it might almost give the oil industry a good name.

He did point a finger at the government here as well. The big investments that the industry makes require a stable tax regime, not the endless tinkering.

If there was another lesson from Apache, it is the need for lean mean project teams. There were just four of them - including Richardson - for its recent Bacchus subsea tieback project (29/10) plus its industry team which included Subsea 7 and GE Oil & Gas.

Subsea 7 continues to try to move its Pipeline Bundle technology out of the North Sea into deeper waters and longer tiebacks, according to John Mair. This is an old story.

And what about this ‘hovering’ auv for carrying out underwater inspection and possibly some intervention?

There were other ‘gongs’ in addition to EPC given at the Subsea UK dinner - JDR, Subsea Technologies, a young engineer from Jee, et al - but the one that caught our eye was for innovation to CDL for its mini-gyro (TOGS).

It has been used to date mostly on rovs, but has other applications with versions rated down to 6,000m. The headman there is Andy Doggett, ex-Prospect Flow Solutions.

On the way up on the plane, SEN saw an obituary for Alan Reece who actually died on New Year’s Eve. Reece was an agricultural engineer who made two fortunes neither which had anything to do with farms.

First, he started Soil Machine Dynamics which designed and built some of the first subsea ploughs and taught many that art who followed on including Tony Trapp of The Engineering Business. After he sold SMD, he started another company which was involved in equipment for the military.

Reece was apparently a gruff northerner who did not suffer fools gladly, but he was also a philanthropist who supported education in engineering as well as mathematics and physics around Newcastle and at Cambridge.

And haunting this show were the ghosts of management past: both David Pridden and Alistair Birnie, the previous two headmen of Subsea UK, were espied walking the floor at the show on Wednesday. Old subsea men don’t die...you can fill in the blank!