The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority has granted the Statoil-contracted semi-submersible Transocean Spitsbergen the approval to begin drilling at production licence 393 in the Barents Sea located approximately 42 kilometers north of the northern tip of Norway in 294 meters of water.
location of Transocean Spitzbergen
The PSA notes that drilling is planned to begin in September 2014 with a duration of approximately 30 days, depending on whether a discovery is made.
The Spitsbergen and her sister rig Transocean Barents are of the Aker H-6e design and among the world’s largest and most robust drilling rigs ever built – and the site of recent protests by Greenpeace.
Greenpeace activists climb aboard the Transocean Spitsbergen drilling rig on the Norwegian Arctic in this handout photo released by Greenpeace May 27, 2014. REUTERS/Greenpeace handout
The Bahamian-flagged rig was built at the Aker Stord yard in 2009 and classified by DNVGL.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday took steps to de-escalate their trade war, swapping some U.S. tariff reductions and tighter export controls for a pause in Beijing's new restrictions on rare earth minerals and magnets and a resumption of its purchases of American soybeans.
Marilyn Hubalde still remembers the first time she heard the thunderous chop of military helicopters swooping over this northernmost outpost of the Philippines, less than 90 miles from Taiwan. It was April 2023, when Filipino and American troops descended on the cluster of 10 emerald green islands of Batanes province for amphibious warfare drills.
By Weilun Soon (Bloomberg) — An India-bound tanker filled with Russian crude reversed course and is now idling in the Baltic Sea, a sign of potential disruption in oil trade between...
October 30, 2025
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