Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (October 05 – October 11).

Oil services company, Subsea 7, has decided to adjust its offshore workforce capacity in Norway after a continued decline in activity levels.

About 70 employees will lose their jobs, bringing it to a 37 per cent reduction of Subsea 7’s Norway offshore staff.

The company was already forced to implement necessary workforce adjustments due to project delays in Norway, with headquarters in Stavanger being the most affected.

Technip was awarded by Shell a contract for the development of subsea infrastructure for the Stones project.

Included in the service are two subsea production tie-backs to the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.

The Stones field is located in the Walker Ridge area in the US Gulf of Mexico, at a water depth of 2,930 meters along the pipelay route.

A new North-east engineering company, Engineering Solutions and Rental (ESR), has been established by Fabritech UK’s managing director, Stuart Mackie, and engineering manager, Innes Smith, to meet demand from clients in the energy, subsea and renewable sectors.

ESR directors Mackie and Smith, have invested over half a million pounds in CNC machinery, tooling and software in order to set-up the specialist firm which will be based within Fabritech’s headquarters in Aberdeenshire.

Deep Down, a subsea oilfield services company, has received the largest order in the company’s history, from an undisclosed client, valued at $13 million.

This order includes one phase of new systems and equipment to be delivered in 2016 for installation in the Gulf of Mexico.

The new deal is the company’s second in just under a moth when it received a $2.5 million order for flying leads and UTA.

DOF Subsea has completed the outfitting of its vessel Skandi Africa and the vessel started on a five-year time charter contract to Technip.

Skandi Africa was awarded “Ship of the year 2015”, and it is designed for harsh environment and deepwater subsea construction and flexlay operations, down to 3000m depth.

The long-term financing of Skandi Africa is arranged by BNP Paribas, GIEK and Eksportkreditt, DOF wrote.