Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - africa

Researchers used corals as temperature archives. Natural variations in the warming and cooling cycles of the Agulhas current core region have been revealed from Madagascar corals. A new study, led by The University of Western Australia and with contribution by Professor Christian Dullo from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, has been published in Nature Scientific Reports. The Agulhas Current, which flows down the east coast of Africa, is the strongest western boundary current in the Southern Hemisphere. Changes in its strength and the heat budget it transports are of interest, both on regional and global scales. The current is also the gateway for warm and salty Indian Ocean water that slowly goes up the Atlantic on its way to the far northern Gulf Stream.

Brazil is the largest country in South America and its oil and natural gas markets have expanded massively in recent years, causing the resurrection of its shipbuilding industry as a bonus. The challenging deepwater development projects have high priority in investments both is subsea technology for deepwater field development and onshore and offshore logistics infrastructure. In recent years Brazil has experienced rapid growth in the petroleum sector. O&G production went from 1.5 million barrels per day in 2001 to 2.4 million b/d in 2010. Offshore production accounted for almost 90% of this figure in 2010. Yet there have also been large onshore natural gas discoveries…

Statoil recently increased the estimates for their Campos Basin pre-salt O&G discoveries up to a substantial total of 1.24 billion barrels boe. Consequently Statoil has also increased its optimism for the geologically similar plays it has in Angola. Not only are the cross ocean plays geologically similar but they are also located along the same longitude. Both pre-salt geological formations off the Brazilian and West African coasts have their origins in common, something that goes back around 120 million years ago, when ancient Gondwana split into what is now known as South America and Africa. The pre-salt reservoirs on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are expected to contain large quantities of light oil.