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Environmental activists who protested at a Russian Arctic offshore oil platform last week will be prosecuted and could face piracy charges punishable by up to 15 years in prison, Russian investigators said on Tuesday. They said the "attack," in which Greenpeace activists tried scaling the Gazprom-owned Prirazlomnaya platform, Russia's first offshore Arctic oil platform, violated Russian sovereignty. "When a foreign ship full of electronic equipment intended for unknown purposes and a group of people, declaring themselves to be environmental activists, try to storm a drilling platform there are legitimate doubts about their intentions," the investigators said in a statement. The...

Seven people have pleaded guilty to stealing money from an oil spill settlement fund, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange announced Monday. Five of the defendants were charged with theft of property. They’re collectively ordered to pay more than $20,000 in restitution, officials said. The defendants were indicted by a Mobile County grand jury on accusations that they created fake documents to file fraudulent claims saying they had lost income because of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Defendants who were paid from the settlement fund have been sentenced to between one and five years in prison. Their sentences...

Our North-Western department has opened a criminal case on probable violation of the part 3 article 227 of the Russian Criminal Code "piracy committed by an organised group". The investigators have claimed that a group of people, probably associated with the "Greenpeace" international ecological organization approached the sea platform "Prirazlomnaya" on the ship "Arctic Sunrise" and attempted an illegal descent onto that platform. Their illegal action was foiled by officers of the Murmansk province's border-guarding department of the FSB. We must state that the ship 'Arctic Sunrise' used by the persons who attempted an illegal descent onto "Prirazlomnaya" was in...

Greenpeace activists arrested after trying to board a Russian oil rig are likely to face piracy charges, local media reports. Two New Zealanders are among the crew of the protest vessel Arctic Sunrise who were confronted and detained by armed members of the Russian coastguard on Thursday. Authorities said the rig was in an exclusion zone, but Greenpeace argues its boat was in international waters. All the activists will be prosecuted for the "attack" on the oil rig, an investigative committee told Russian media. In a statement the committee said it had opened a criminal case on suspicion of piracy....

Armed Russian officials have boarded a Greenpeace ship and arrested activists, including six Britons, protesting against oil drilling in the Arctic, according to the environmental group. The Arctic Sunrise is in the remote Pechora Sea in the Russian Arctic, near to Russian oil company Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform to try and prevent attempts to drill for oil in the region. Greenpeace said the Russian coastguard abseiled onto the Arctic Sunrise from helicopters and arrested 25 protesters on-board, including six UK nationals.

INGLESIDE — Of the towering oil platforms under construction along the Texas coast, one stands out because it can’t yet stand. It’s a 23,000-ton cylindrical column the length of two football fields, and it must remain on its side at a noisy construction yard here until it is towed into place in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and hoisted upright. The steel hull is too big to handle any other way. On a recent weekday, workers welded finishing touches to the 605-foot, 110-foot-diameter structure, a critical component to one of the several new platforms being completed in...

Russia has blocked a Greenpeace ship from entering Arctic waters where the environmentalist group was planning to protest against oil exploration activities by Rosneft and ExxonMobil, the group said. Russian authorities denied the icebreaker Arctic Sunrise entry to the Northern Sea Route, citing questions over the vessel's ice strengthening, Greenpeace said in a statement... ..."This is a thinly veiled attempt to stifle peaceful protest and keep international attention away from Arctic oil exploration in Russia," Greenpeace campaigner Christy Ferguson said in a statement... ...Greenpeace said it wanted to "expose" the offshore activities of Russian oil company Rosneft and US partner...

Leica DM4000M microscopySuper sucker. Copper needles could help remove oil from the ocean. Researchers looking for a better way to clean up oil spills are taking a cue from the humble cactus. A new study shows that synthetic needles based on those of the desert plant can take up oil droplets from the ocean much as the cactus takes up water from the air.Cactus needles have a curious effect on water. When tiny water droplets in the air land on them, the needlesÂ’ conical shape distorts them, nudging them into a clamlike shape. Because water droplets like to be circular,...

Natural gas stopped flowing from a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico after sediment in the well blocked the uncontrolled flow, federal authorities reported Thursday. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said the well “bridged over,” meaning small pieces of sediment and sand flowed into the well path, restricting the flow and countering the pressure. A fire that had engulfed a portion of the Hercules 265 jack-up rig was put out early Thursday morning, according to a Coast Guard report to Congress. “They are lucky,” said Bud Danenberger, a consultant and former chief of offshore regulatory programs at...

A well blew out, a rig is abandoned, and a fire raged uncontrollably in the Gulf of Mexico for an entire day this week. For many, it was a stark reminder of the dangers involved in offshore drilling and in particular, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, an epic tragedy that unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Since then, the oil and gas industry has encountered enormous public scrutiny, and government oversight by an organization called the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). According to a statement on their website, “BSEE works to promote safety, protect the environment, and...

The centerpiece of a more than $1 billion system for containing oil spills will be stored and maintained at a site in Ingleside, Texas, creating additional jobs in the coastal region known for its platform building capabilities. Marine Well Containment Company announced the decision Wednesday. The company says its system will be capable of containing oil spilling from wells in waters up to 10,000 feet deep. It can contain oil flowing at a rate of 100,000 barrels per day, according to Marine Well Containment Company. The system includes a large collection of components that will be stored and maintained either...

A blowout preventer may have ignited the fire that caused a Gulf of Mexico rig to partially collapse Wednesday, after a natural gas well blew out, federal authorities reported. A leak in the natural gas well, owned by Walter Oil & Gas, ignited a fire on a jack-up rig operated by Hercules Offshore late Tuesday night, hours after its 44 workers had been evacuated, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. The blowout preventer has since collapsed and isolated the fire,reducing the danger of a fire on the remainder of the jack-up rig but making a top kill...

In the waning days of the Los Angeles oil boom, prospectors struck black gold below Torrance and Long Beach, touching off a renewed oil fever in the South Bay. Beachgoers sunned themselves in the shadow of drilling rigs, and nearby Signal Hill became known as "Porcupine Hill" for its spiny forest of derricks. But Hermosa Beach remained a 1.5-square-mile oasis, thanks to a 1932 vote that banned new drilling within the city. More than 50 years later, Santa Monica-based Macpherson Oil dangled the prospect of tens of millions of dollars in royalties, and voters in then-cash-strapped Hermosa voted to lift...

Congress can do more to advance offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean while boosting the economies of coastal states, eight governors said Friday. Options rage from giving states a greater share of federal drilling royalties to passing legislation that would force the Interior Department to make more coastal tracts available for oil and gas development, the group of coastal governors said. The governors, including Texas’ Rick Perry, made their pleas in a letter to their congressional delegations in the nation’s capital. “During this congress, legislators will consider several matters that directly and indirectly affect the future...

Shell’s Olympus platform is finally embarking on its last epic voyage. The Dutch company’s biggest and recently constructed tension leg platform started its final pre-production journey on Sunday, setting sail from the construction dock in Ingleside, Texas (near Corpus Christi) for a 425-mile voyage to the Mars B Field in the Gulf of Mexico. For the next ten days, multiple tugboats will haul the 120,000 ton Olympus through the Aransas Pass jetties to its site destination 130 miles south of New Orleans. Earlier this year, the hull made an 18,000-mile, two-month trek from South Korea to Ingleside. The Olympus is...

Transocean Ltd. announced that its ultra-deepwater drillship Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 has set a new world record for the deepest water depth by an offshore drilling rig. The Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 (UDW Drillship) recently drilled a well in 10,411 feet (3,174 meters) of water while working for India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) off the east coast of India. "This accomplishment surpasses Transocean’s prior world record of 10,385 feet of water (3,165 meters) also set by the KG1 while working for ONGC in India in February," Transocean said in a press release. ONGC reported that well # 1-D-1 in...

This Saturday a commemoration service will be held in Aberdeen, Scotland to mark the 25th anniversary of the world's worst offshore oil and gas disaster. On July 6th 1988, 167 oil workers were killed, while there were just 62 survivors, after a gas condensate leak led to an explosion and fire on the North Sea platform Piper Alpha, which was completely destroyed. The service, which will be held at Aberdeen's Hazlehead Gardens at 11 a.m. (UK time), will be another reminder of the risks taken by oil and gas workers in the North Sea and in other offshore locations around...

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive took advantage of a loophole that allowed the company an exemption from Securities Exchange Commission regulation.

Hello Russia news Freepers. Tired of all this talk about companies hiding money offshore and not paying taxes? If there is one man who can make some noise about this, it won't be Obama. It'll be Putin. He already is taking over from British PM David Cameron who first made overtures to the fact that offshoring was unfair.

Broad, bipartisan support is building among lawmakers at the state and federal levels for expanding access to offshore oil and gas drilling and development, said Erik Milito, American Petroleum Institute director of upstream and industry operations. Speaking to reporters during a June 5 conference call from Washington, DC, Milito said increased offshore access would mean increased jobs and revenue for the states of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. “The United States must pursue smart federal policies” that would expand the Outer Continental Shelf program, Milito said. “Developing our offshore resources is vital.” Drilling off Virginia and other Atlantic states...