The Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors is forecasting continued challenges in the oil and gas industry if the federal government does not scale back on what it calls punitive regulations and defend the industry more vigorously.

Dresser Natural Gas Solutions (Dresser NGS) has announced updated design enhancements for many Category 1 fittings.

Whether connecting a blowout preventer on a drilling rig or installing a bundle for a heat exchanger in a refinery turnaround, one of the last, and most critical, steps in completing the work is to torque the fasteners on the flanged connections. The likely tool available is a hydraulic torque wrench, but as most industry technicians know, these tools are slow and can present safety and environmental challenges. 

The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (the Agency) is conducting a federal environmental assessment for the Newfoundland Orphan Basin Exploration Drilling Project, proposed by BP Canada Energy Group ULC, located offshore, northeast of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC) has released its 2020 Canadian Oilfield Services Activity Forecast, in which the organization projects a total of 4,500 wells (rig releases) to be drilled in Canada in 2020. For 2019, the Association's final revised forecast predicts a yearly total of 5,000 wells. 

Improved online resources are now available for rotating and reciprocating equipment engineers and operators. Waukesha Bearings, Bearings Plus, Inpro/Seal and Cook Compression have updated their websites to not only enhance the user experience but also expand the technical know-how available to the industry. 

Schlumberger announced that its technology partnership with Microsoft to develop cloud-native solutions on Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack has been strengthened by new deployments being introduced at the SIS Global Forum 2019 in Monaco.

Honeywell has unveiled new software to help field workers in the oil and gas, mining, and aerospace industries digitize equipment inspection programs, which can increase productivity, improve accuracy and minimize unplanned asset downtime. 

Endress+Hauser is offering two universal, device configuration tablet PCs that provide especially fast, efficient one-click mobile device configuration and plant asset management in hazardous environments. With these robust, touch-enabled Field Xpert tablet PCs ­­- model SMT77 for Cl. 1 Div. 1 and SMT70 for Cl. 1 Div. 2 - maintenance staff can manage virtually all digitally communicating Endress+Hauser and other field instruments throughout their entire life cycle. Both can be utilized just as effectively in non-hazardous parts of the same facilities.

Baker Hughes, a GE company, and C3.ai announced a joint venture agreement that brings together BHGE's fullstream oil and gas expertise with C3.ai's unique AI software suite to deliver digital transformation technologies that will drive new levels of productivity for the oil and gas industry.

Emerson announced the release of Geolog 19, the latest version of its formation evaluation software suite.  This release includes new display formats that enhance collaboration between subsurface specialists. This includes representation of zonal data as crossplot and histogram tracks so that geoscientists can better understand the relationships between rock formation pressures, stresses, and mud weights, for example. The release also enhances its data connectivity and "openness" features with direct streaming of wellsite information transfer standard markup language (WITSML) data into Geolog's geosteering application, expanded connectivity to third-party applications, including Petrel 2019, and the integration of Python scripts for enhanced customization with no separate installation.

Metegrity, a globally trusted provider of quality and asset integrity management (AIM) software solutions, announces the launch of VisionsGo: a new mobile technology for asset inspections management. This first-of-its-kind technology empowers companies with the ability to execute, perform, collect and analyze all asset inspection data directly from the field via mobile tablet.