Posted in Offshore Energy - General, Gulf of Mexico, energy policy, tagged BBG1, BBG2, BBG3, bids, big beautiful Gulf of America, lease sale, MMA, oil and gas, pre-sale stats on August 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The pre-sale statistics are attached.
The table below compares the pre-sale stats for BBG3 with those for BBG1 and 2. The number of BBG3 bids, while well below BBG1, which was the first sale in 2 years, bounced nicely from BBG2 levels.
| BBG1 12/10/2025 | BBG2 3/11/2026 | BBG3 8/12/2026 | |
| tracts bid on | 181 | 25 | 59 |
| total bids | 219 | 38 | 69 |
| shelf bids (<200m) | 12 | 2 | 12 |
| deepwater (>400m) | 168 | 23 | 47 |
| companies bidding | 26 | 13 | 12 |
Posted in California, energy policy, Offshore Energy - General, Regulation, tagged Harmony, Heritage, Hondo, oil production, quarterly update, Sable Offshore, Santa Ynez Unit on August 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Excerpts from Sable’s quarterly report:
Production
Sales
A detailed regulatory and legal update can be found beginning on p. 13 of the Quarterly Report.
Posted in Barbados, energy policy, Offshore Energy - General, tagged 19 blocks, Barbados, direct negotiations, offshore oil on August 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Barbados 2026 Offshore Petroleum Direct Negotiations process is underway. Nineteen blocks (yellow in map) are being offered. Direct negotiations for pre-qualified companies will continue through January 15, 2027, and awards will be announced by February 15.
I’m convinced! 😉
Posted in California, energy policy, Gulf of Mexico, natural gas, Offshore Wind, tagged Atlantic wind, floating wind turbines, Gulf of America, irrational exuberance, lease buybacks, Pacific, record bonus bid, RWE on August 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »
RWE has agreed to relinquish their Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of America wind leases.
“After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.”
Comment: The poor prospects for these leases had more to do with bad investment decisions than permitting challenges. The company is fortunate to be able to rollover their lease bonuses into LNG infrastructure and gas turbine purchases.
The relinquished leases:
OCS-A 0539: RWE paid the highest bonus ever, $1.1 billion, for this lease at the irrational exuberance Atlantic wind sale in Feb. 2022. The amount was $305 million higher than the next highest bonus for any offshore lease.
OCS-G 37334: RWE was the only bidder at the 2023 Gulf wind lease sale. A second Gulf wind sale received no bids.
OCS-P 0561: RWE underestimated the technical and economic challenges associated with deepwater floating wind development offshore California and elsewhere. Only one wind lease remains in the Northern California wind lease area. Two of the three wind leases in the Central California area have also been relinquished.
The wind adverse U.S. Administration offered RWE a lifeline that allows them to reinvest in more prospective projects:
Apparently, the attached letter from 50 U.S. environmental groups asking RWE not to keep their wind leases was not persuasive (and perhaps RWE didn’t appreciate the implied threat of litigation against a deal that was in the company’s best interest).
Posted in Alaska, energy policy, Offshore Energy - General, Regulation, well control incidents, tagged Arctic drilling, BOEM, BOP, BSEE, MMA, regulations, same season relief well, subsea isolation device, well control on August 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The proposed revisions to the Arctic drilling regulations are a positive initiative that will improve the prospects for renewal of Beaufort and Chukchi Sea exploration.
In particular, removing the same-season-relief-well (SSRW) requirements in the current regulations is an essential regulatory action. The SSRW provision has the effect of precluding exploratory drilling while providing no added environmental protection and increasing operational risks. Given that there is at least a 50% chance that rig mobilization, relief well planning, drilling, repeated surveying, and plugging the flowing well would take more than the specified 45 days, a SSRW is not a legitimate well control option.
The preamble includes important questions for respondents. These questions are compiled beginning on p. 108 of the attachment. In particular, the comments on Subsea Isolation Devices (SSIDs) should be interesting. Given the required blowout preventer stack redundancy, it’s not clear to me that SSIDs would reduce blowout risk. They would however increase operational complexity.
For floating drilling operations in the Arctic and elsewhere, the focus needs to be on well design, integrity, and control. Fortunately, by carefully verifying casing and cement integrity, ensuring complete barrier redundancy, and having standby capping and containment capability, the probability of a sustained oil blowout can be reduced to 10–6 or lower.
Lastly for now, these regulations further demonstrate the importance of consolidating BOEM and BSEE in a single bureau.
Posted in Alaska, drilling, energy policy, Regulation, tagged Arctic drilling, BOEM, BSEE, Marine Minerals Administration, proposed regulations, SSRW on August 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The proposed revisions to the Arctic drilling regulations have just been posted and are attached for your convenience.
From a risk management standpoint, the current Arctic drilling rule, particularly the same season relief well (SSRW) provisions, is arguably the worst in the history of the OCS program. Regardless of the prospects for Arctic exploration, offshore drilling is not feasible under the current regulations. Hopefully, this proposal represents a significant improvement. More to follow after the text has been reviewed.
Posted in deep sea mining, energy policy, Offshore Energy - General, Regulation, tagged Amanda Van Dyke, deep sea mining, International Seabed Authority, low impact, marine minerals, Regulation on August 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Interesting article by Amanda Van Dyke. Highly recommended.
There are 67 NGOs with observer status at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) as of March 2026, which explains why nothing gets done. More than thirty years after its creation, there is still no final Mining Code for nodule exploitation.
“Deep‑sea mining disturbs low‑productivity abyssal ecosystems and may have long‑lasting local effects on small communities of widely distibuted organisms reliant upon the nodules themselves, but avoids the deforestation, human displacement and occupational hazards of many terrestrial mines. The ethical question is whether it is better to concentrate impacts on a relatively small portion of the most common habitat on Earth, or to continue expanding high‑impact mining frontiers on land like tropical rainforests.“
“The job of a regulator is not to deliver closure for activists. It is to regulate access to resources designated as the “common heritage of mankind” in a way that balances environmental protection, equitable benefit sharing and global development needs. That will always involve trade‑offs.“
Posted in California, energy policy, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged California, offshore oil, Sable Offshore, ONRR, Santa Ynez Unit, Gulf of America production on August 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Per EIA, Gulf of America oil production declined in May by over 200,000 bopd from April’s record production, which was corrected upward by 2000 bopd. Was the April number anomalous? We’ll need additional monthly data and the audited ONRR numbers to get a better read.
EIA posted corrected April and May totals of 30,000 bopd for the Pacific (California OCS), a 150% increase from February owing to the Sable Santa Ynez Unit restart. Although Pacific OCS production has been in the doldrums for years, the region has an impressive record of 202,000 bopd from Dec 1995.
Meanwhile EIA has still not corrected their 2025 OCS production totals to correspond with the audited ONRR data.
| 2025 OCS total – ONRR | 2025 OCS total – EIA | 2025 Gulf only – ONRR | 2025 Gulf only – EIA |
| 713,673,419 | 697,020,000 | 708,803,859 | 692,634,000 |
Posted in energy policy, Florida, Uncategorized, tagged BOEM, Gateway-S, MMA, Oceaneering, offshore and space synergy, Rigs-to-Rockets, Seagate Space, Space Florida on July 28, 2026| Leave a Comment »
MMA’s public notice about support for space launch activities (Rigs-to-Rockets) recognizes the importance of collaboration between the highly innovative offshore and space industries.
In that regard, Seagate Space, a Florida company, is moving forward with plans for offshore launches. Seagate is “developing cutting-edge maritime infrastructure to avoid land site limitations and scale orbital launch cadence for commercial, government, and defense missions.”
Seagate’s Space Gateway-S platform has adopted features that have been widely applied by the offshore industry:
Space Florida, a public corporation and innovation connector, recently announced a partnership with Seagate Space:
EXPLORATION PARK, Fla.—June 2, 2026— Today, Space Florida announced Project Manta, a strategic investment in Seagate Space to expand Florida’s launch capacity through specialized maritime solutions. Space Florida’s Board of Directors approved an investment to prototype and demonstrate key elements of Seagate Space’s novel offshore launch infrastructure system, setting the stage for future development and manufacturing within the state of Florida.
Seagate has also signed an MOU with Oceaneering, a leading offshore company.
Jacksonville news clip about offshore launches:
Posted in California, energy policy, Offshore Wind, tagged California, challenges, Equinor, floating turbines, infrastructure, Invenergy, lease buybacks, Offshore Wind on July 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Despite strong support from the State, California’s offshore wind sector faces major challenges:
Two of the three Central Coast wind lessees (diagram below) have agreed to lease buyback deals. A lease cancellation letter is attached. The State is challenging the buyback agreements, and is thus in the difficult position of opposing deals that the wind developers voluntarily agreed to and believe are in their best interest. Does the State lose regardless of the outcome of their challenge?
The third Central Coast lessee, Equinor, is curtailing wind investments and has no plans to pursue new offshore wind projects in the US. A buyback deal with Equinor would be complicated by the company’s Empire Wind commitments, and is probably unnecessary given that Equinor has taken itself out of the game.
The two Northern California leases are still active, but the focus has been on regional planning. Funding for necessary infrastructure projects is uncertain and any wind lease development is far in the future.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 