Posted in Canada, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Bay du Nord, Equinor, Exxon, Flemish Pass, Odfjell Hercules, Orphan basin, Persephone well, Sitka well on July 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Per the CNLOPB weekly activities report, Equinor spudded the important Sitka C-02 well in the Flemish Pass area on July 10, 2024. This well will help clarify the resource potential in the Bay du Nord project area with the goal of better defining development plans.
Meanwhile, operations on Exxon’s important Persephone well in the Orphan Basin have now been ongoing for 2 months. Some type of announcement by Exxon is expected after operations are completed and the well has been plugged.
Posted in accidents, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, Uncategorized, tagged BSEE, drilling blowouts, high consequence events, OCS incident data, performance measures, Secret Service on July 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »
As is the case with many Federal and corporate entities, the Secret Service website is long on promotion and short on substantive details and performance data. The limited “Measurable Impact” statistics on their webpage advise that the Secret Service protected 6623 foreign and domestic visits “without incident” in Fiscal Year 2022, which ended 22 months ago.
Their 2024 budget request overview includes a bit more information (pasted below). The Secret Service gives themselves a perfect score if protectees arrive and depart safely. When your scores are always 100%, your performance measures are clearly inadequate.
Like drilling blowouts, assassinations are low frequency, high consequence events. Prevention requires gathering data on lesser events, identifying leading indicators, and tracking high-potential precursors. You don’t prevent high consequence events by only tracking high consequence events.
Inspections are also critical. Does the Secret Service inspect events to assess protective measures such as verifying that the surrounding areas are cleared and being observed? If so, what do those numbers look like.
BSEE, the OCS safety regulator, does a good job of collecting data, but fails to compile and post updates in a timely manner. Their latest incident tables are for 2022, and even those data are incomplete. Panel investigations, which are conducted for the more serious incidents, now take 2.5 years to complete. This is unacceptable for an organization with BSEE’s talent, resources, and safety mandate.
Posted in drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Diamond Offshore, GEMS, IADC, merger, MMS, Noble Corp., SAFE Awards, safety, ZIO on June 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Noble’s acquisition of Diamond Offshore will unite two safety management pioneers and long-time offshore safety leaders. The press release stresses the importance of their “culture commonality around safety, operational excellence and service posture,” and their “shared commitment to these foundational principles is expected to be a driving force toward a successful and seamless integration.” While such statements are common in corporate merger announcements, Noble and Diamond “walked-the-walk” for decades, so their statement is more than corporate lip service.
Noble and Diamond have been driving company and industry safety performance through their management and culture programs like Zero Incident Operations (ZIO), Global Excellence Management Systems (GEMS), SAFE Days, and Live Safe Code, and through participation in IADC safety initiatives.
Because of their outstanding safety, environmental, and compliance records, both companies received multiple Minerals Management Service SAFE Awards.
Posted in drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Anadarko, BOEM, Chevron, diligence, Murphy Oil, Ocean Blsckhawk on June 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Following up on last year’s deepwater diligence post, 4 recent deepwater exploratory wells (table below) were spudded within 4.5 years of the effective date of their leases.
Particularly noteworthy is Anadarko’s well on newly acquired Mississippi Canyon Block 40, which was spudded only 18 months after the lease was acquired. Everything has to be in place for such an outcome: corporate priority, data gathering and analysis, well plan, permitting, and rig contract/availability.
The well was apparently a high priority not just for Anadarko, but also for Chevron and Murphy. MC 40 was acquired by Chevron (bidding alone) at Sale 257 for $4,409,990, the third highest bid at the sale. Murphy had submitted a losing bid of $3 million, but was assigned a 33% share of the lease by Chevron on 12/15/2023. One month earlier, Anadarko had been assigned a 33% interest and became lease operator.
Interestingly, BOEM’s Mean Range of Value (MROV) estimate for the block was only $576,000, so the three companies are seeing something that BOEM doesn’t. We’ll see how this plays out.
According to rig tracker data the Ocean Blackhawk is still on location at MC 40. Per BSEE permitting data, the well was approved to be bypassed in mid-May.
| Lease No. | Block | Operator | Water Depth (feet) | lease date spud date | elapsed time (months) | EP received EP approved |
| G37199 | MC 40 | Anadarko | 4704 | 10/1/2022 4/9/2024 | 18 | 10/20/20233/7/2024 |
| G36924 | AT 453 | Chevron | 5698 | 7/1/2020 1/23/2024 | 42 | 9/25/2023 11/21/2023 |
| G36676 | AT 138 | Murphy | 3444 | 7/1/2019 11/14/2023 | 52 | 10/3/2023 11/7/2023 |
| G36558 | MC 801 | Shell | 3303 | 1/27/2024 7/1/2019 | 54 | 8/6/2021 1/19/2023 |
Posted in Canada, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Exxon, Newfoundland, Orphan basin, resource assessment, Stena Drillmax on May 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Per rig tracker data, the Stena DrillMAX has been on location at Exxon’s Orphan Basin wellsite since Sunday (19 May). The site is 317 miles (510 km) NE of St. John’s in Block 1169 (~3000 m water depth).
Per this very good resource assessment report for the Govt. of Newfoundland and Labrador, “the Orphan Basin area demonstrates a potentially prolific petroleum system with four main plays (reservoirs and associated seals) sourced by various source rocks (Upper Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Paleogene).“
Unrisked resource estimates (theoretical pending confirmation by drilling) at the 90, 50, and 10% probability levels for the Orphan Basin blocks offered for licensing in Nov. 2022:
Taking into account the risks of the geologic model not accurately reflecting the reservoir, seal, charging, and trap components of the petroleum system, the probability of finding 13.5 billion drops to 16% (see plot below). This is still a high probability for a massive wildcat discovery.
This is why you move a state-of-the-art drillship thousands of miles to drill a single exploratory well at a remote location in the North Atlantic. The most likely outcome is negative or inconclusive findings, but the potential for such a major discovery justifies the investment.
Posted in Canada, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, tagged exploratory drilling, Exxon, Orphan basin, Stena Drillmax on May 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The DrillMAX has exited Bulls Bay and is en route to the Orphan Basin, where Exxon will drill a high potential exploratory well. As of this morning at ~1000 GMT, the drillship was headed north at 7.7 kts (see map).
Posted in drilling, Norway, Offshore Energy - General, tagged 17th of May, Constitution Day, Gratulerer med Dagen, JL Daeschler, Noble Innovator, Norway on May 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
On Constitution Day, best wishes to our Norwegian friends!
This JL Daeschler photo was taken in Stavanger harbor in 2003. JL’s wife Debra, a Petrodata Marine editor, is pictured in the foreground. The rig in the background is the Maersk (now Noble) Innovator, a large jackup capable of operating in water depths to 492 ft. The legs are 674 ft (Washington Monument = 555 ft).
Posted in Canada, drilling, Uncategorized, tagged Canada, geomagnetic storms, gps, oil drilling, solar storms on May 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Last year, there were reports that a level 3 geomagnetic solar storm rendered GPS signals unreliable and caused the brief suspension of at least one drilling operation in Canada (tweet below).
This weekend’s solar storms were level 5, the highest category (see chart below), but there have been no public reports to date of suspended drilling operations.
Posted in Canada, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Bay Bulls, exploratory drilling, Exxon, Orphan basin, Stena Drillmax on May 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
According to rig locator data, the DrillMAX is moored in Bay Bulls, Newfoundland in preparation for transit to the site of Exxon’s high potential exploratory well in the Orphan Basin.
Posted in Canada, drilling, energy policy, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Algerich well, Argentina, Atlantic, Atlantic drilling, Atlantic OCS, Canada, Deepwater US Atlantic, Equinor, Newfoundland, Orphan basin, Pan America, Stena Drillmax, Valaris on April 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The Valaris DS-17 drillship is now on location to drill the Algerich-1 well for Equinor 315 km from Mar del Plata in 1527 m of water at Block CAN 100.
Concurrently, at the opposite end of the Pan American continents, the Stena DrillMAX is closing in on Exxon’s Orphan Basin location offshore Newfoundland to drill another high potential well.
Meanwhile, the US Atlantic is “wind-only,” despite high deepwater oil and gas potential. The late Paul Post, an esteemed colleague and the leading expert on the petroleum geology of the US Atlantic, believed the deepwater US Atlantic could contain >20 billion BOE. No other Pan American nation has completely closed its Atlantic margin to oil and gas exploration.
Can a nation with a debt of $35 trillion afford to ignore oil and gas resources that will remain in high demand for decades?
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 