The Songa Saturn departed Malta 21 December after successfully completing the earlier announced 3800 ft Water depth upgrade and is expected to commence operations for CNOOC in Equatorial Guinea mid January 2010.

Polarcus Nadia is one of the safest and most environmentally sound seismic vessels in the market with diesel-electric propulsion, high specification catalytic convertors, DP2 dynamic positioning, and advanced bilge water cleaning, enabling the vessel to conform to existing and envisaged IMO and Class rules and to comply with the Det Norske Veritas (DNV) stringent CLEAN-DESIGN and COMF-V(3) class notations.

On 1 January 2010, new Rules for Hull Structures of Offshore Service Vessels will come into force. These rules apply to ships intended for offshore support and supply, offshore towing, well stimulation, and other specialised offshore services.

Noble Corporation (Noble) is an offshore drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry. The Company performs contract drilling services with its fleet of 63 mobile offshore drilling units located worldwide. This fleet consists of 13 semisubmersibles, four dynamically positioned drillships, 43 jackups and three submersibles.

A fire broke out on the platform “Transocean Winner” in the North Sea on Christmas Day. The crew were sent to the lifeboats, but were not evacuated, and no one was injured in the fire.