Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

On February 12, 2024, the bankruptcy court approved the sale of certain Cox Operating assets to Natural Resources Worldwide LLC (NRW), a company that had no prior offshore experience. NRW contracted with Array Petroleum to operate 154 Cox legacy platforms (per MMA data). NRW is listed as the operator of just one platform.

The bankruptcy court had previously approved the sale of Cox assets in 6 Gulf of America fields to W&T Offshore.

As noted in previous posts, the Cox legacy of non-compliance has continued under new ownership. In 2026 YTD, Array Petroleum accounted for 52% of Gulf of America Incidents of Non-Compliance (INCs) while operating only 12% of the platforms, and producing only 0.06% of the oil and 0.17% of the gas (2025 production data). Their 2026 YTD INCs/inspection ratio is 7.55 times the Gulf average and 14.6 times the Gulf average if Array inspections are excluded.

The only platform operated directly by NRW was cited for 3 INCs on 2 inspections.

Per MMA data, W&T operates 117 platforms in the Gulf. The number of platforms that were included in the acquisition of the 6 Cox fields is unknown. W&T’s INC/inspection ratio in 2023, the year before the Cox acquisition, was 0.72 (80/111), which was better than their 2026 performance (0.94), but worse than the Gulf-wide 2023 average of 0.57. So W&T’s compliance relative to other Gulf operators was about the same before and after the acquisition.

According to the borehole file, neither Array, NRW, nor W&T conducted any drilling operations in 2026 YTD.

Kudos to the MMA inspectors for their diligence in identifying INCs and issuing citations. The 2026 YTD data table is below.