Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Coast Guard, Gulf of Mexico, oil sheen on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
What was reported as a miles-long oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is likely a plume of silt emanating from a dredging operation on the Mississippi River, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said Sunday.
So much for the hysterical post-Macondo rush to judgement by a few reporters.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Coast Guard, Gulf of Mexico, sheen, W&T on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The Examiner is reporting the following:
The oil sheen is suspected of coming from the Matterhorn field which includes a deepwater drilling rig, Matterhorn Seastar that is owned by W&T Technology. The oil is suspected from coming from a leak in the well which is a producing well.
Suspected by whom? Does the reporter have legitimate information or is this rank speculation? The Coast Guard is sorting this out, so we should know something soon. A statement from W&T would be helpful.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Coast Guard, Gulf of Mexico, oil spill on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The Coast Guard said in a news release that it received a report of a three-mile-long rainbow sheen off the Louisiana coast just before 9:30 a.m. local time on Saturday. Two subsequent sightings were relayed to the Coast Guard, the last of which reported a sheen that extended from about 6 miles south of Grand Isle, La. to 100 miles offshore.
Though the Coast Guard was able to confirm that there is a substance on the water’s surface, it has not yet been able to determine if it is oil. Wall Street Journal
Posted in Uncategorized on March 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The supermoon is a normal part of the moon’s orbit around Earth. Because of small fluctuations in that oval-shaped orbit, the moon will be about 8 percent closer to Earth than it usually would be at that point in orbit. That means it will look huge, about 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than full moons occurring on the opposite side the orbit, according to NASA. Arizona News
Posted in accidents, Uncategorized, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on March 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Summit Entertainment, Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi, have announced that they’ve acquired the film rights to a 2010 New York Times article on the BP oil spill.Forbes
This is the excellent New York Times piece referenced in the quote.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Carolita Kallaur Award, IRF, NOIA, SAFE Awards, Safety in Seas Award on March 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I am honored to be serving as one of the judges for this year’s Safety in Seas Award. As it has been every year since 1978, this prestigious award will be presented at NOIA’s Annual Meeting in April. To the best of my knowledge, Safety in Seas is the oldest safety award program for offshore oil and gas operations. This year’s nominations are very impressive. Congratulations to the participating companies and individuals!
I have had the pleasure of participating in other offshore safety awards programs including the Carolita Kallaur Awards and the MMS Safety Awards For Excellence (SAFE). Unfortunately, the latter program appears to have been suspended or terminated, presumably as a result of last year’s blowout. That is unfortunate. The SAFE program was initiated in 1983, and District and National awards had been presented each year. The winners took great pride in their safety achievements. As many as 800 people packed the annual awards event in Houston to recognize the winners, promote safety achievement, and draw attention to safety issues.
Past achievements don’t guarantee future success in any endeavor, be it sports, the arts, business, or even politics. However, we don’t stop recognizing champions because they might fail in the future, we don’t stop presenting Academy Awards because future movies might be disappointing, and we don’t stop holding elections even though we never seem to get it right.
It’s been a tough five years for the US offshore industry – recovering from a series of major hurricanes and an unprecedented drilling blowout. Investigations continue and changes are necessarily being made. During these challenging times, positive recognition is more important than ever. We must learn from successes as well as failures, and reinforce outstanding offshore safety leadership. I look forward to the presentation of the Safety in Seas Award and hope that SAFE program will resume in the near future, either under the direction of the Federal government or separately.
DOI Asst. Secretary Sylvia Baca and MMS Associate Director Carolita Kallaur present 2000 SAFE Award (moderate activity category) to British Borneo USA
Posted in Uncategorized on March 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daylight savings time, energy policy on March 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »
A wise old Indian said:Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.
The fact that Daylight Savings Time is one of our more noteworthy energy policy achievements speaks volumes about our current economic predicament.
Posted in accidents, cuba, drilling, energy, Uncategorized, tagged Australia, Brazil, deepwater drilling, drilling, energy, ISO TC 67, Japan, macondo, Mexico, Montara, Ningaloo Reef, nuclear, offshore energy, offshore safety institute, Petrobras, standards on March 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Japan will likely need more imported oil and natural gas due to closures of nuclear reactors caused by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, but volumes can’t be calculated accurately as it is unclear how much industrial output has been affected by the disaster and how long power nuclear and thermal power plants will remain closed. Wall Street Journal
The CEOs of major oil and gascompanies will meet March 18 to decide how to proceed with the formation of a US offshore drilling safety institute, William Reilly, the co-chair of the National Oil Spill Commission, said March 8. Platts Oilgram News
Marco Aurelio Garcia, foreign policy adviser to President Dilma Rousseff, told reporters in Havana exploratory work off Cuba’s northern coast had not shown good results and that Brazil wanted to concentrate on its own oil fields.
Since BP’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico last April, the risks of offshore oil drilling have been a hot topic. One place it isn’t questioned much is Brazil, whose oil production industry is one of the fastest-growing in the world because of vast new deepwater oil reservoirs discovered in the past five years.
Pemex has just begun to explore in Mexico’s Gulf of Mexico waters deeper than 1,000 feet, but 28 billion undiscovered barrels of oilequivalent are thought to exist in that area, some of which borders US territorial waters. Pemex officials said the company is forging a development plan for its first deepwater field, Lakach, located northeast of the state of Veracruz in about 3,200 feet of water. First production is expected in 2015.
Environmentalists are furious at a proposal by the petroleum company Shell to start exploration drilling off one of Western Australia’s most treasured reefs. Ningaloo Reef off the north-west coast, has been nominated for World Heritage listing.
Posted in Uncategorized on March 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »
BOE staffer departs for special assignment
This week, our staff will be fully immersed in special projects, and will not be able to post on the blog. All BOE subscriptions will be extended by a week at no cost to our subscribers. 🙂
While we are gone, we encourage you to read the “Best of BOE” (best being a relative term :))
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 