Free Republic

As state, local and federal officials brace for a major offshore drilling operation to begin between Cuba in Key West in December, another exploratory well may be drilled a year later in the Bahamas. The Bahamian and Cuban governments on Oct. 3 signed an agreement delimiting the two nations’ maritime borders after nearly 40 years of negotiations. The move cleared a major obstacle in the way of the Bahamas’ oil exploration goals since leases identified for their potential oil finds are near Cuban waters.

A Chinese-made oil rig is on schedule to arrive off Cuba and begin drilling before the end of 2011, a spokesman for Spanish oil company Repsol YPF said Thursday. Spokesman Kristian Rix would neither confirm nor deny recent reports of delays as the Scarabeo-9 rig travels to the Caribbean island, but he said the project has always been based on a window of time and things are still on schedule. He said it’s impossible to predict exact dates for such a complex undertaking as transporting the huge offshore rig, which is capable of housing up to 200 workers.

One year ago today, the Obama administration lifted the ban on most deep-water drilling that was temporarily imposed after the Gulf oil spill. The House Natural Resources Committee is marking the occasion with a hearing focused on examining the lingering effects of that five-month moratorium. Panel Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said the administration is dragging its feet in issuing permits to drill offshore, and those approvals haven’t yet met a pre-spill pace. “The Obama administration’s inability or refusal to issue permits in a timely and efficient manner (even) after the official moratorium was lifted resulted in lost jobs and significant...

Spagnoletti alleges that a standby ship that was in place to take the workers away in case of trouble left without them, knowing the liftboat had been crippled by the storm and the workers had already called for help. He said the standby ship was still in the area when the workers went into the water. “The vessel didn’t stand by. It just took off,” he said, adding the workers should have been evacuated ahead of the storm. Spagnoletti said the standby vessel left because its crew was getting seasick and wanted to go back to shore. The men tried...

The company formed by major oil companies to handle future subsea well blowouts is adding a new piece to its system. The Marine Well Containment Company took delivery of a new Aframax tanker, the “Eagle Texas,” to serve as one of two dedicated vessels that will process and store oil as it is being recovered from a subsea blowout. The Eagle Texas was commissioned at a recent ceremony in Takamatsu, Japan and will soon undergo conversion and modification before come to the Gulf of Mexico. The tanker will be operated by AET Tanker Holdings. “This tanker is critical to our...

Seven of 10 oil workers missing in the Gulf of Mexico were found alive Sunday, according to Mexico’s state oil company, three days after evacuating their disabled rig in a tropical storm and escaping in an enclosed life raft. Two bodies also were found but have yet to be identified, and rescuers are still searching for one worker who remains missing, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said in a statement. Pemex identified the survivors as two Americans, Jeremy Parfait and Ted Derise, Jr., both of Louisiana, Kham Nadimuzzaman of Bangladesh and Mexicans Ruben Velasquez, Eleaquin Lopez, Luis Escobar and Ruben Lopez...

BP has evacuated nonessential personnel from three of its production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico due to Tropical Storm Nate. BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said personnel have been evacuated from the Mad Dog, Holstein and Atlantis platforms in the southern Green Canyon section of the Gulf of Mexico. The storm is expected to move toward the southern tip of Texas but will not make landfall until late Sunday or Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

BP says it has drilled a successful appraisal well in a previously untested northern segment of the Mad Dog field in the Gulf of Mexico, leading it to double the size of the potential resource. The well, drilled by BHP Billiton on behalf of the unit operator BP, is in Green Canyon block 738, about 140 miles south of Grand Isle, LA., in about 4,500 feet of water. The well encountered about 166 net feet of hydrocarbons in the objective Miocene hydrocarbon-bearing sands and discovered an oil column of more than 300 feet. Combined with successful appraisals in Mad Dog...

Energy companies have started returning workers to offshore oil and gas production platforms in the wake of Tropical Storm Lee, but weather conditions continue to slow efforts. BP, the largest producer in the Gulf, said offshore conditions are improving steadily but high wind gusts are still limiting many helicopter flights out of Louisiana. Vessels leaving Port Fourchon, a key supply hub for the Gulf, are also continuing to experience rough seas, BP said in a statement. BP expects to begin returning crews to offshore facilities Tuesday morning. Shell, the No. 2 producer is continuing to redeploy personnel to its Western...

Oil companies are once again squaring off with government regulators in the Gulf of Mexico. This time, its Exxon Mobil. The giant oil company is fighting to retain leases for the Julia field, what could be the biggest oil discovery in the Gulf ever, or at least since BP’s Thunder Horse field in 1999. The problem: the government claims Exxon’s leases for the field have expired. The Obama administration has been cracking down on unused offshore leases, which cost the Treasury royalties, the Wall Street Journal reported. Exxon seems to believe getting an extension on the lease was just a...

?

Another deep-water drilling rig is leaving the Gulf of Mexico amid a continued slowdown in activity in the U.S. offshore basin following the BP oil spill last year. Noble Corp. said its rig, called the Noble Paul Ramano, has taken a 180-day contract with Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. Ltd. to drill six wells offshore Egypt, with an option for four additional wells. The semi-submersible rig, which has been idle in the Gulf of Mexico since June 2010, is expected to start work in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea in October, the Zug, Switzerland-based drilling contractor said in a statement. Many deep-water...

The next presidential election is 15 months away, and 2012 (like most elections) will come down to the mundane, everyday, bread-and-butter issue of economics. I submit that the biggest economic indicator is the price of gasoline. Back in 2006, Nancy Pelosi railed about high gasoline prices, asserting that they were the result of “Big Oil” running the government. Barack Obama picked up on this theme during his 2008 presidential bid, and said he "felt the pain" of those who had to pay exorbitant gas prices.

Oil and gas production platforms continued to come back on line over the weekend as crews returned to offshore sites that had been evacuated as Tropical Storm Don came into the region late last week. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement reported about 6 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil production (84,000 barrels) and 3.5 percent of the natural production (186 MM cubic feet per day) remained shut-in on Sunday. That’s an improvement over the peak storm-related outages of 11.9 percent of the oil production 6.2 percent of the natural gas production reported on Friday. Evacuating...

Oil and gas drilling in federal waters near Alaska could create tens of thousands of jobs annually and send the government nearly $200 billion in revenue, a Shell Oil Co. executive is set to tell a Senate panel today. Pete Slaiby, vice president of the company’s Alaska operations, is making his case for oil development near Alaska’s coasts before the Senate Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard Subcommittee this morning. The panel is studying whether the U.S. should be doing more to take advantage of emerging economic opportunities in the Arctic region. Shell is asking federal regulators for permission to...

Senator Jim Webb today called for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to incorporate his Virginia Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Energy Production Act in pending offshore energy legislation this week. “Outer Continental Shelf production has strong support among Virginians and their political leadership,” Senator Webb wrote the Committee’s Chairman and Ranking Member. “I look forward to working with you to ensure that all of Virginia’s OCS energy resources are developed in a timely fashion, through a fair distribution of revenues between the federal and state government, and in an environmentally sound manner.” In his letter Senator Webb also urged the...

U.S. Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner introduced legislation Wednesday that would speed up the timetable for natural gas and oil exploration off Virginia's coast and expand the state's share of offshore territory. The bill also would require that half of future government revenues from offshore drilling be allocated directly to the state government or spent by federal officials on conservation efforts, transportation improvements and alternative energy projects in Virginia. The two Democrats' proposal goes further in seeking a larger share for Virginia from offshore resources than a House measure co-sponsored by two Hampton Roads congressmen. However, the plan will...

Latin America oil and gas activity is booming, with year-on-year rig activity increases from April 2010 to April 2011 in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, according to a recent report by London-based Evaluate Energy. The five countries have experienced at least a 15 percent increase in active rigs from the April 2010 count. In Brazil, the average number of rigs grew from 85 in April 2010 to 108 in April 2011, and in Venezuela, the average number of rigs grew from 88 in April 2010 to 110 in April 2011. However, Colombia has leapfrogged the pair within two years...

Diamond Offshore said that it will move another of its deepwater rigs from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico later this year to drill wells off Vietnam for BP. When the Ocean Monarch is moved, it will be the third Diamond rig to leave the Gulf of Mexico since BP's deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion in April and the subsequent shut-down of deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. Diamond said in a fleet status report that the Ocean Monarch should conclude its current contract with Marathon, for which the driller earned about $290,000 per day, in mid-August.

Exxon Mobil Corp. has made one of the largest oil and gas finds in the Gulf of Mexico in a decade, the company announced today. The oil major said it made two oil discoveries and a natural gas discovery in its Keathley Canyon blocks, including an oil discovery in the company’s first exploration well since last year’s moratorium on deep-water drilling. Exxon expects the combined finds to yield more than 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. More than 85 percent would be oil, the company said. Drilling early in 2010 turned up oil and natural gas at the well 250...