Posted on 09/27/2005 7:49:09 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Rita causes record damage to oil rigs By Carola Hoyos in London, Sheila McNulty in Houston and Thomas Catan in Johannesburg Published: September 27 2005 20:14 | Last updated: September 27 2005 20:14
Hurricane Rita has caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East, initial damage assessments show.
ODS-Petrodata, which provides market intelligence to the offshore oil and natural gas industry, said it expected a shortage of rigs in the US Gulf this year.
“Based on what we have right now, it appears that drilling contractors and rig owners took a big hit from Rita,” said Tom Marsh of ODS-Petrodata. “The path Katrina took was through the mature areas of the US Gulf where there are mainly oil [production] platforms. Rita came to the west where there is a lot of [exploratory] rig activity.”
Ken Sill of Credit Suisse First Boston said: “Early reports indicate numerous rigs are missing, destroyed or have suffered serious damage and several companies have yet to report. Rita may set an all-time record.”
The US Coast Guard said nine semisubmersible rigs had broken free from their moorings and were adrift.
This damage could not have come at a worse time for oil companies and consumers. US crude futures on Monday fell 37 cents to $65.45 a barrel in midday trading in New York as refineries that were evacuated before the onset of Rita returned to operation.
Earlier in the day, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, said the market had not taken up the 2m barrels a day of spare capacity the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries offered last week. Speaking in Johannesburg, he blamed high oil prices on a lack of industry infrastructure, including rigs and refineries, rather than oil reserves. Rigs, which are movable and are used for exploration and development, were in short supply before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew through the US Gulf in late August and September.
High oil prices and the desperate search for new oil supplies needed to meet rampant demand from the US and China have made rigs difficult to find and expensive to hire. Rigs cost $90m-$550m to construct, depending on how sophisticated the structure and how deep the water in which it will drill. A rig ordered today is unlikely to be ready before 2008 or 2009, analysts said.
As a sign of just how precious rigs are becoming to the market, Anadarko, the biggest US independent oil company, this week set a record by committing to a rig six years in advance; commitments in the past were made months ahead of time rather than years.
Initial reports from companies are ominous. Global Santa Fe reported it could not find two of its rigs. Rowan Companies reported four rigs damaged, with two having moved, one losing its “legs” and the fourth presumed sunk. Noble has four rigs adrift, with two run aground one into a ChevronTexaco platform.
I have no particular knowledge of the damage down there, but I know that 'experts' are ALWAYS wrong when estimating recovery time from damage. Give a good engineer a big budget and miracles happen.
Remember Gulf War I? YEARS to put out fires, experts assured us. Red Adair made it pretty short work. MONTHS to pump out New Orleans, experts told us. Try a few weeks when real pump guys got on the job.
Oil rigs aren't different. Speculators pumping disinformation so they can engage in profit-taking from the panicky rubes!
You're saying that the only numbers in the death counts are those who have been positively identified??? Why on earth would the government use a definition like that? If that turns out to be the case, my faith in government will sink even lower than it already was... In Indonesia, they used death estimates based on found bodies and known missing persons. I wonder if anyone has been compiling a "missing persons" list that people use to make themselves "found"? It would make sense to do that, but you never know what agenda's agencies of government (at any level) have...
Nobody seems to get that though.
Tell you what, whereas before I was ambivalent about drilling off of Florida, two major hurricanes blowing through the Gulf have shown me that we should probably drill off of Florida.
I have yet to see any evidence of a major spill due to damage to these rigs.
more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East
Oh,oh!
Most large companies like Shell, ConocoPhillips etc are self-insured. I worked with a couple different ones after major damage. Enron, however, was not self-insured.
So which media is wrong? How do you tell?
Somebody could be trying to make a few bucks in the trading market.
Okay, here's his posts:
Hurricane Rita Live Thread, Part VII
Posted by BurbankKarl to LikeLight
On News/Activism 09/24/2005 12:46:06 AM EDT · 960 of 2,960
Its the Deepwater Nautilus...
You are correct. It broke free and blew up the bay, about ten miles, and damaged the rig pretty good though. Strange sight, under that bridge.
This aint good.
I was watching some press conf. yesterday with some FEMA guy and he was asked about the death toll.
He basically said their method is this, they find a body, try to identify the person, and THEN put the name on a list which then increases the death toll.
So I took that to mean if they've got 100 dead bodies and they've identified 3, the death toll only rises by 3 because they have the names of those 3.
2,665 posted on 09/04/2005 9:49:51 AM EDT by OXENinFLA
This is a rough summary of the process down there.
From the Transocean Website:
The Deepwater Nautilus is one of 13 Transocean 5 th-generation mobile offshore drilling rigs that work in the world's deepest water depths. A multi-operation-class rig, the Deepwater Nautilus can operate within a pattern of eight mooring legs. A 9,400-metric-ton deckload accommodates all the equipment, riser, conductor and casing to start a well and work through setting the BOP on the wellhead quickly and efficiently.
In addition to the world water-depth records for a moored rig, the Deepwater Nautilus Team also holds the world record for the deepest subsea completion, set recently at 7,570 feet of water on the Shell-operated Coulomb project C-2 well in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
Exactly where is that drum of gasoline, again?
First you say the bodies weren't counted because they were washed away, then you say that they were seen by EMS personnel. At least get your story straight.
My guess is that you fell for that story promulgated by a mortician who wasn't even in the state and which was swallowed by the media.
The upside down platform is Chevron Typhoon. There is a press release about it on the Chevron website, but it states the platform "suffered serious damage" and fails to mention it is floating upside down. Pics are available if you google "Chevron Typhoon"
"Black Gold" erupted from this well near Beaumont, Texas to a height greater than 150 feet (nearly 50 meters) on January 10th, 1901. It was not brought under control for 9 days, losing one million barrels of oil in the process.
BTW Have you and treble rebel found those 800 bodies in Mississippi yet?
May I ask who it belongs to? I may want to sell short ..
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