BP and Equinor have quit Nova Scotia’s upstream sector in Canada, leaving the once-alluring region without an active exploration licence, potentially putting a final nail in the coffin of the province’s E&P scene which is already been on its death bed.
Some of us remember the record water depth well (4876′) drilled by the Discoverer Seven Seas offshore Nova Scotia in 1979. (Correction: The record water depth well was actually offshore Newfoundland. Many thanks to Howard Pike for the reminder.)
Some notable achievements offshore Nova Scotia:
Cohasset Panuke provided Canada’s first offshore oil production (1992), and the first for the Atlantic waters of North America.
The Sable Offshore Energy Project was responsible for Canada’s first offshore gas production (1999)
A novel jackup platform produced gas from the Deep Panuke field from 2013 to 2018.
The only remaining exploration and production operations in the Atlantic offshore North America are in Newfoundland waters (link to map).
Oil and gas workers’ union, Unite Scotland, has demanded intervention by the Scottish government in response to Canadian Natural Resources (CNR) International introducing mandatory vaccinations, calling these measures “draconian.”
By the end of 2022, Germany will have switched off its last 8.1 GW of nuclear power. Another 6.4 GW of coal capacity are scheduled for shuttering by 2023. Recent events and publications have given ammunition to those who fear a collapse of the system.
In 2018, Germany’s influential energy industry association BDEWsaid that Germany would run into a “shortfall in secured capacity by 2023 at the latest”, and that the country shouldn’t rely on its neighbors to make up the difference. Three years later and a lot closer to the nuclear phase-out, BDEW head Kerstin Andreae says: “For a secure energy supply, we also need new gas-fired power plants, as this is the only way to obtain the required controllable power.”
Germany will need back-up and supplemental power from gas plants, but the EU has excluded gas-fired energy generation from the list of sustainable investments and the associated incentives. Per Kerstin Andreae of the BDEW:
“We need to build these new power plant capacities now. Although they will initially run on natural gas, they are already capable of using hydrogen as an energy source in the future and will thus ultimately become climate neutral,” she said. But without a clear decision from the Commission „ important energy transition investments are at risk”
Meanwhile, oilprice.com reports that “UK peak-hour power prices for Monday evening through 6 p.m. surged to the highest level in a month due to low wind power generation during the weekend.” In what is becoming a familiar story:
Coal closures and no immediate replacements for nuclear power have exposed the UK’s vulnerabilities to the whims of the weather, with cold winters stoking natural gas demand and still weather lowering wind power generation.
Daniel Yergin reminded us that energy transitions take time. Countries that ignore those realities are likely to suffer the consequences, both economically and environmentally. Per Aissatou Sophie Gladima, the energy minister of Senegal:
Restricting lending for oil and gas development, she said, “is like removing the ladder and asking us to jump or fly.”
Deb Haaland, US Secretary of the InteriorErling Braut Haaland
As a result of her mother’s heritage, Deb Haaland is the first Native American to serve as a US cabinet secretary. However, her father, a decorated Marine Corps officer was a Norwegian American. She thus has the same surname as Erling Braut Haaland, the star striker for Norway and BVB Dortmund in the German Bundesliga.
Although most Americans cannot name the Secretary of the Interior (James Watt was an exception thanks to his attempt to ban the Beach Boys from the 4th of July concert in Washington😃), Deb Haaland is probably slightly better known in the US than Erling Haaland. However, thanks to the popularity of football/fussball/futbol/soccer, Erling is much better known internationally.
What does this have to do with offshore energy? Well Norway, which just announced record oil and gas revenues, has managed to sustain leasing, exploration, and production throughout the pandemic without compromising safety and environmental objectives. They also wisely eased the petroleum tax burden during the pandemic with favorable results.
The temporary change in the petroleum tax has most likely led to an increase in project activity. The projects would most likely have been carried out even without the tax package, but some of them would have been postponed.
This should not surprise experienced OSHA regulators given the absence of clear legislative authority.
Offshore regulators in the US have used “work-arounds” in the form of Notices to Lessees, Conditions of Approval, and other types of guidance documents. However, there was a general understanding that requirements imposed by these methods would not survive legal challenges unless they were clearly authorized by legislation or regulations. Most work-arounds aren’t challenged because the regulatory authority is reasonably clear, their issuance is at least minimally acceptable to the regulated industry, or the perceived cost of challenges exceeds the cost of compliance.
A Norwegian union representing offshore oil and gas workers has criticized Aker BP’s process to introduce a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for its offshore employees.
“We agree that we must protect our employees and our suppliers in the best possible way, but it also requires that we are involved in how it should happen and how our employees and suppliers are taken care of in this process.”
Seems like a reasonable position on the part of the workers. As previously reported, many US oilfield workers are skeptical of the vaccine mandate and have warned that they will quit.
See the video below. The size and durability of the bladders could be issues at locations where there are other seafloor activities (e.g. trawling), but this and other pumped hydro-storage concepts are promising. Onshore testing of this concept is scheduled for 2023 in the Netherlands. Energy storage and stable, reliable power supply will be critical to the long-term success of offshore wind projects.
Nearly 17 years after the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (incorporating language drafted by Minerals Management Service staff) authorized wind energy projects in Federal offshore waters, commercial offshore wind power is not imminent. Despite enthusiastic political support and promised State and Federal subsidies, no commercial scale offshore wind development has commenced. The groundbreaking ceremony for Vineyard Wind I (pictured above), the first project approved by BOEM, may prove to have been premature. The project faces multiple lawsuits from commercial fishing organizations and an organization concerned about possible impacts to the endangered right whale.
Yesterday, BSEE issued investigation reports for 2 of the fatal 2020 incidents. Both of these incidents involved falls, a chronic and preventable cause of offshore worker casualties. Not enough industry and trade association attention is given to such incidents, which have been trivialized in the past by categorizing them as “slips, trips, and falls.” The reports are linked below:
The reports describe how the incidents occurred and what we can do better to prevent similar events in the future. Despite the advance in safety management programs over the past 30 years, there has been no discernible improvement in preventing these incidents. We need to rethink training programs, planning, and methods. Deadly falls are not inevitable.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 