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Best Wishes to Jim Magill!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Jim Magill with unidentified official

After an outstanding 22-year career, Jim Magill is retiring from the US Coast Guard on 27 August.  Among other important responsibilities, Jim worked closely with the Minerals Management Service on OCS oil and gas issues, served as  Executive Director of the National Offshore Safety Advisory Committee, and developed regulations for offshore rigs and platforms.

For most of his career, Jim worked on the Coast Guard’s epic Subchapter N rule for offshore facilities.  For reasons beyond Jim’s control, completion of this rule was excruciatingly slow, even by Federal rulemaking standards.  To give you a sense of how slow this process has been, we annotated the timeline on this geologic time chart! 🙂

Timeline for the Coast Guard's Subchapter N Rule (click on figure to enlarge)

We know Jim will enjoy his new home, golf, consulting, and all of his “retirement” endeavors; and Subchapter N will now be someone else’s problem!

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Canada Says No to Drilling Moratorium

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Canadian Senate has decided that the facts do not justify banning Canada’s offshore drilling operations.  The full report is linked.

The Senate also showed support for the International Regulators’ Forum.  Canada will be hosting a major international conference in Vancouver in October.

The committee heard sufficient evidence to make it comfortable with Canada’s (federal and provincial) approach to striking this risk/reward balance andwith its new judgment-based and goal-oriented regulatory approach. Canada is a leading participantin the International Regulators Forum, a group of offshore industry regulators from the most activeoffshore drilling nations, including Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, NewZealand, the Netherlands and Brazil. Interestingly, none of these nations have called for or imposedbans on current offshore drilling operations within their jurisdictions following the BP incident.

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Residents of all 50 states submit Macondo spill claims

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The filing of claims from far away “gives you some idea of the creativity of the claimant population.” Kenneth Feinberg, Administrator of BP Spill Fund

Link

Hopefully, Feinberg will be able to weed out most of the scammers.  Sadly, some of the people who are most deserving will be too proud to submit a claim.

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Not My Job (Anymore) Award Candidates

Posted in Uncategorized on August 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

by Chris Britt, Creators Syndicate

Offshore worker escapes to new life!

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X Prize Skimmer Competition at Ohmsett

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Ohmsett

The top team that demonstrates the ability to recover oil on the seawater surface at the highest oil recovery rate (ORR) and recovery efficiency (RE) will win the $1 million Grand Purse. Second place will win $300,000 and third place will win $100,000 in purses

Are you confident that your innovative oil skimmer is better than the rest?  Now is the chance to prove it.  Amaze the world, win a million bucks, and put yourself in position for some major contracts.  Skimmer vs. skimmer in a challenging test tank competition.

Show us what ‘ya got!  We’ll be watching!

Link for more information.

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Aban Pearl and Other Pending Investigations

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Aban Pearl

According to our 15 May post,  Venezuela established a special commission to investigate the sinking of the Aban Pearl, a semi-submersible rig that sank on 13 May 2010.  In the subsequent 3 months, we have not seen any updates on that commission or the status of the investigation.

BOE will also be tracking any reports on the recent crane failure and apparent fatality on the Jack Ryan, and the Bayou St. Denis blowout.  Let us know if there are other major offshore accidents that we should be tracking. With regard to the Jack Ryan, a description of the tragic crane accident is posted in a thread on the Oil Rig Photos site (see the 3 August post).

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Gulf Shores 3 – Kudos to the Coast Guard

Posted in Uncategorized on August 12, 2010| 1 Comment »

from Colin:

Got a visit from the USCG today

Oil is again on the beach…probably due to the storm and a stringer that was offshore and came in.

Am impressed with the USCG personnel….very clear as to what is happening……

BP crews stood down because of “storm”, but it is certainly nothing as strong as such here

The end result is that the beaches here are not that oily, but there will be re-currences of staining (such as we have seen yesterday and today) on the shoreline after and associated with storms.

Clean is attainable….pristine will take some time.  I think we have an appreciation of the impact of Macondo on the environment.  The folks here certainly have an appreciation of the impact on their pocket books.

We must always remember the 11

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Gulf Shores 2

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Unfortunately, Colin’s second report from Gulf Shores is not as favorable.  A “band” of oil arrived on the beach yesterday.  Colin reports that cleanup crews have disappeared and had this to say about the BP response center:

Communicating is very difficult and probably not effective.  The person who answers on their 1-866 number has no local knowledge at all.  He then has to pass on a message to the “local center”…….there is no number (confirmation or otherwise) for follow up.

Disappointing.

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Colin Leach Reports From Gulf Shores, AL

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Weather: Hot and Sunny

Food: Wonderful

Water: Clear and Warm – Have disturbed fish and crabs!

Beach: White Sand – Clean

Folks need to come down, see and enjoy!

Colin notes that the resort is not nearly as busy as usual.  We all know why. The beach contamination scare spread much farther than the oil.  The Evening News in Norfolk warned viewers that Macondo oil was headed for Virginia Beach!  Should these fear-mongers contribute to BP’s compensation fund?

With regard to Macondo, Colin astutely offers the following:

the story is now quite complex with the flow on the inside, but the potential outside flow the heavy influence on the way forward…….I think that for future incidents we have to have a full and open set of information….suspect that this would have resulted in an easier, faster solution

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While we are on this Tiger Mike and Steve Slater kick …..

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Jenny quit her job working for a modern day Tiger Mike by emailing these photos to the entire office.  Well played Jenny!  Make sure you look at all of the pics.

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