Highlights of the Week

Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (December 15 – December 21).

The UK-based oil services company Subsea 7 is reported to be letting go almost 150 employees in Norway.

According to the latest reports, the company revealed that its Norway headquarters in Stavanger will be the most affected, with 108 slated to be laid off. In addition, the company’s staff in Vigra, Oslo and Kristiansund have also been slashed.

Seabed-to-surface engineering contractor, Subsea 7, has announced that, with effect from 1 January 2015, it will be changing the organisational structure of its business.

According to the company, its to better align Group’s strategic priorities and to further strengthen the its execution capabilities and competitiveness. The new organisational and segmental reporting structure will comprise two Business Units, which replace the existing four geographical Territories, and a Corporate segment.

In response to cost and efficiency challenges affecting the UK North Sea oil & gas sector, Wood Group PSN (WGPSN) has today announced plans to reduce the rates paid to its UK-based limited company offshore and onshore contract workers.

In addition, salaries will be frozen for the majority of UK-based Wood Group onshore employees.

An up to 10 per cent decrease in UK offshore and onshore contractors’ rates will be effective from 31 January 2015.

French engineering group Technip has informed that it no longer plans to pursue its takeover bid for CGG.

Namely, Technip approached CCG earlier this year, in November, with a public tender offer in cash for CGG’s shares at a price of 8.30 euros per share and no deal was made.

After CGG declined the bid, Technip put forward a number of alternative options to a tender offer. However, according to Technip, the discussions of these options did not result in any form of agreement.

The U.S. Navy completed tests on the GhostSwimmer unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story (JEBLC-FS).

GhostSwimmer is the latest in a series of science-fiction-turned-reality projects developed by the chief of naval operations’ Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) project, Silent NEMO. Silent NEMO is an experiment that explores the possible uses for biomimetic, unmanned underwater vehicles in the fleet.