1. Helix has inked 19 Gulf of Mexico customers for its Deepwater Containment System. What will happen to the Marine Well Containment Company which was announced with much fanfare in July? Does it make sense to have two such consortiums operating in the Gulf?
2. No new reports on the Apache gas leak in the press or on the company’s website. More transparency is needed in the post-Macondo era.
3. The Deepwater Horizon BOP testing remains a mystery. If you disregard the erroneous January 5th and 6th updates (which pertain to hearings held last summer), the official investigation website has not been updated since before Christmas. Given the importance of this work, the absence of status updates is disappointing.
4. Useful listing of deepwater Gulf projects in Offshore magazine.
5. The National Commission Chairs will appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee tomorrow. The hearing will be webcast live beginning at 0930. Here is some pre-hearing chatter.
6. The Aban Pearl semisubmersible drilling rig sunk offshore Venezuela last May. Will the world ever find out what happened? In fairness to Venezuela, they aren’t the only ones sitting on reports.
7. “The oil spill [has] definitely [been] blown out of proportion.” Judith McDowell is a highly respected scientist. If this is an accurate quote, it is quite significant.
8. Transocean wants to pay dividend.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 
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