Free Republic

A $40 million engineering structure belonging to Iran's South Pars gas field, which was to be used in offshore platforms, sank into the Gulf as it was being installed, media said on Wednesday, as reported by AFP. The equipment was built by Maritime Industrial Company (SADRA), an affiliate of the industrial wing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, over a 30-month period." An investigation is under way," SADRA's managing director Mehdi Etesami told the ISNA news agency, without elaborating. The incident occurred Monday night as the 1,850-tonne jacket developed for South Pars Phase 13 sank to a depth of 80 meters (264...

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico. The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of...

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wants answers from the US taxpayer supported Export-Import bank about a $2 billion loan to Brazil for offshore drilling. Vitter’s home state is suffering under a moratorium imposed by President Barack Obama. Vitter said Louisianians “are frustrated” and he wants to know “why permitting domestically is nearly stalled…” Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had questions about ExIM—nine years ago when he asked Congress to reject the reauthorization of ExIm for “economic, constitutional and moral reasons.” Vitter sent a letter to Fred Hochberg, Ex-Im president, on March 17. Vitter asked Hochberg to identify all US companies that have...

The U.S. aircraft carrier presence in the Persian Gulf will temporarily decline due to unexpected repairs and unusual maintenance problems, the Navy said on Wednesday. The USS Nimitz was expected to be deployed to the Gulf early next year to relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is now stationed in the region, but will be delayed due to the need for extensive repairs on a failed propulsion pump. The USS Eisenhower is being sent back to the U.S for repairs to its flight deck. It will remain in Norfolk, Virginia, for two months and then return to the Middle...

Millions of pounds of unexploded bombs and other military ordnance that were dumped decades ago in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as off the coasts of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, could now pose serious threats to shipping lanes and the 4,000 oil and gas rigs in the Gulf, warns two Texas A&M University oceanographers. William Bryant and Neil Slowey, professors of oceanography who have more than 90 years of combined research experience in all of the Earth's oceans, along with fellow researcher Mike Kemp of Washington, D.C., say millions of pounds of bombs are scattered over the...

(CBS/AP) TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has test-fired four missiles designed to hit warships during a drill near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian military commander said. The missiles were fired simultaneously and hit a "big target" the size of a warship, sinking it within 50 seconds, Gen. Ali Fadavi of the powerful Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.

Obama and Netanyahu will meet in an unannounced meeting, the London Telegraph reported Sunday. There has been no confirmation. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will meet on Sunday in an unannounced meeting, The London Telegraph reported Sunday. There has been no confirmation or denial from Washington - but the Prime Minister’s spokesman Mark Regev told Arutz Sheva on Sunday that the newspaper’s report they will meet on Sunday is “incorrect.” Concerning a meeting in the near future, he issued a “no comment” response. The reported meeting is to take place as 25 countries deploy warplanes and warships...

PJM EXCLUSIVE: Louisiana's GOP senator on how the cover-up to trump sound science in favor of political ideology keeps growing with each chapter. Here’s the book-jacket teaser: A major U.S. environmental disaster strikes. As Coast Guard and other heroes struggle to contain the unprecedented damage, a different scene unfolds in a dimly lit conference room in Washington. A small group of high-ranking political hacks and overzealous ideologues see an opportunity to manipulate the situation to advance their agenda. They doctor a key report on the disaster by experts in order to justify shutting down all exploration and new production. They...

Iran is rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, amassing an arsenal of sophisticated anti-ship missiles while expanding its fleet of fast-attack boats and submarines, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts say. The new systems, many of them developed with foreign assistance, are giving Iran’s commanders new confidence that they could quickly damage or destroy U.S. ships if hostilities erupt, the officials say. Although U.S. Navy officials are convinced that they would prevail in a fight, Iran’s advances have fueled concerns about U.S. vulnerabilities during the opening hours of a conflict in the gulf. Increasingly...

larmed by widespread reports of visibly sick, deformed seafood coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, state officials have closed area waters to shrimping this morning (April 23). The waters will be closed indefinitely as scientists run tests in an effort to get a handle on a situation that is fast becoming a full-blown crisis on the Gulf Coast. The closures – including all waters in the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay, areas of Bon Secour, Wolf Bay and Little Lagoon – mark the first official step in responding to increasingly urgent reports from fishermen and scientists of grotesquely disfigured seafood...

The debate on church buildings launched by Islamicist politicians in the Gulf continues. The Sheikha Fraiha Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family and chairman of the Kuwaiti "Society for the Ideal Family," has attacked the Islamist parliamentarian Walid Al-Tabtabaei, because he attacked her commitment to the construction of an Armenian Apostolic Church. The lawyer for the Sheikha described the attacks of the MP as "absurd and offensive," as the foundation "Pro Oriente" reported on Friday, according to Kathpress.

Mexico's leader sees potential in progress of Petrobras Guillermo Najera, a 42-year-old machine operator at Mexican state-controlled oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, gets paid to do nothing all day. Pemex management can't fire the union worker or transfer him from the ammonia plant in Ciudad Camargo, where he still shows up for work even though the plant stopped production in 2002. "We don't have anything else to do except keep our areas clean," Najera says as he and dozens of other idle workers enter the gates of the plant for the 7 a.m. shift. "I want to go back to work."...

Mexico and the United States signed an agreement on Monday to help U.S. firms and Mexican oil monopoly Pemex exploit deep water oil resources in the Gulf of Mexico that straddle the countries' maritime boundaries. The deal, negotiated last year, will lift the moratorium on oil and gas exploration and production for 1.5 million acres in the Gulf and sets up legal guidelines for companies to jointly develop any trans-boundary reservoirs.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa signed an agreement today for joint development of oil and and natural gas reservoirs that straddle the two nations' maritime boundaries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, is losing about $1 billion a year from drilling delays in the Gulf of Mexico since the 2010 Macondo disaster. Shell’s production in the region will be curbed by about 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent this year, similar to 2011, Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said. The company expects to return to planned operations off the Gulf coast by 2014. “The cash flow implications are a billion dollars or more per year relative to where we want to be,” Henry said in London today. “We are catching up.” The company, which in...

Underscoring its desire to keep U.S. aircraft carriers from the Persian Gulf, a senior Iranian military commander today announced his possible plan to ambush the American fleet. Chalk this one up to more bluster, or part of a mounting back and forth rhetoric headed nowhere good, either way - Tehran plans to rely on its subs. Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army's Self-Sufficiency Jihad, Rear Admiral Farhad Amiri told Fars that Iran has the finest electic diesel submarines in the world, and that while the U.S. has focused on Tehran's "astonishing surface capabilities," it has forgotten about the underwater threat....

Throughout the months-long 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists expressed surprise at the development and relatively speedy disappearance of giant plumes of subsea oil and gas that jetted from the wellhead and refused to surface. A new study explains how bacteria degraded the plumes so efficiently: A succession of hydrocarbon-noshing species mushroomed because their movable feasts were repeatedly replenished. Only about 15 percent of the BP gusher floated up to form giant surface slicks, a second new study finds. Natural gas constituents and dissolvable chemicals amounting to twice that mass remained near the seafloor, creating the...

The Royal Navy's most formidable warship is being sent to the Gulf for its first mission as tensions rise in the strategically vital region, it can be disclosed. Naval commanders believe the deployment of HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer, will send a significant message to the Iranians because of the firepower and world-beating technology carried by the warship.Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, has publicly warned Iran that any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would be "illegal and unsuccessful".

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality. Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light...

Four times a year, Democrats and the Left cherry-pick oil and natural gas companies’ quarterly earnings and supplementary data in an attempt to justify tax increases on some of America’s largest employers. Yes, Exxon and other American oil and natural gas companies make a lot of money, but they also pay a lot of taxes and employ a lot of people—two facets of these companies that are rarely, if ever, discussed. You are “Big Oil” Today Exxon announced 3rd quarter profits of $10 billion. So when oil natural gas companies make billions, who profits? If you have a retirement fund...