Posts Tagged ‘Deepwater Horizon’
Italian drill rig arrives in Cuba to begin deep water oil exploration
Scarabeo 9 – owned by Italy’s Saipem
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
A large oil rig has arrived off the coast of Cuba to begin searching for offshore oil deposits.
Several international companies will use the rig to drill exploratory wells in deep water in the Florida Strait, which separates Cuba from the US. Cuba is hoping to confirm estimates that it has billions of barrels of oil in offshore fields.
But there is concern in the US that a deep water spill could devastate the coast of Florida.
Semi-hogwash! Concern from American companies forbidden by idiotic laws from bidding on the contracts? Worries from my environmental peers who never noticed the thousands of wells drilled safely round the world – until BP and Halliburton screwed-up in the Gulf of Mexico?
The Chinese-built rig – known as Scarabeo 9 – could be seen from the Cuban capital Havana as it moved slowly west.
First to use it will be the Spanish oil company Repsol YPF, which plans to drill an exploratory well around 100km from the Florida Keys. Other foreign companies are also planning to hire the rig…
If confirmed, the estimated offshore deposits could turn Cuba into an oil exporter and transform its troubled socialist economy…
Repsol has said that its operations will comply with all US safety regulations, and the rig has been inspected by US officials.
Hopefully, the Spanish company will live up to the general standards for deepwater drilling which are more demanding and rigorous than what passes for regulations in the United States.
BITD – when I worked in offshore oil drilling construction – standards and regulations were built up to a pretty high standard in the US. In the last couple of decades, the government agencies providing oversight became nothing more than party buddies of Big Oil. The regulations became a farce. Drilling rigs coming in from duty, say, off Brazil or Norway, were instructed to remove some of the redundant safety systems – which was done on the TransOcean Deepwater Horizon rig.
The ongoing boycott of normal relations with Cuba is a special category of stupid.
Brits will review North Sea drilling rules in light of BP spill
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Britain said on Wednesday it would review its regulations covering offshore oil and gas drilling in the North Sea following the publication of a U.S. investigation into BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The review will start within a month and will report later this year, Energy Minister Charles Hendry said in a statement…
A White House panel probing BP’s massive oil spill called on Tuesday for an overhaul of America’s offshore drilling regulatory system, damning it as “entirely unprepared” for disaster..
Last week a parliamentary report warned Britain was not ready to tackle a spill of the kind suffered by BP and that if one did occur, taxpayers could end up paying the clean-up costs.
Hendry said his officials would study the White House oil commission’s report to identify its implications for British deepwater drilling. He said some of the report’s recommendations were already existing practice in the North Sea but that Britain was committed to learning what it could from the findings.
“We have already acted, in the light of the emerging information from the many investigations into the disaster, to strengthen where we can what is already one of the most robust environmental and safety regimes in the world,” he said.
In particular, devices called acoustic switches required by Norwegian regulators and accepted by the Brits could have been, should have been, used on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. They had been in place for previous drilling ventures in the North Sea.
Oil Industry gets billions in tax breaks and subsidies – from you
When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its American taxes.
The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.
At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.
With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.
They’ve learned all the appropriate catch phrases used by Democrats and Republicans alike.
North Korea or right-wing Nutballs – who do you fear most?
Army called in to guard torpedos that missed target
A grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., that has caused great loss of life, untold billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States…
On the night of April 20th the North Korean Mini Submarine manned by…“suicidal” 17th Sniper Corps soldiers attacked the Deepwater Horizon with what are believed to be 2 incendiary torpedoes causing a massive explosion and resulting in 11 workers on this giant oil rig being killed outright. Barely 48 hours later, on April 22nd , this North Korean Mini Submarine committed its final atrocity by exploding itself directly beneath the Deepwater Horizon causing this $1 Billion oil rig to sink beneath the seas and marking 2010’s celebration of Earth Day with one of the largest environmental catastrophes our World has ever seen.
To the reason for North Korea attacking the Deepwater Horizon, these reports say, was to present US President Obama with an “impossible dilemma” prior to the opening of the United Nations Review Conference of the Parties to the Treat on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) set to begin May 3rd in New York.
This “impossible dilemma” facing Obama is indeed real as the decision he is faced with is either to allow the continuation of this massive oil leak catastrophe to continue for months, or immediately stop it by the only known and proven means possible, the detonation of a thermonuclear device.
Every nutball south of Sarah has joined in on this one.
Here’s your chance!
Who was doing what when the drilling rig blew? Ask Halliburton!
An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history…
The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn’t begun.
In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn’t known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.
Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force…
The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week…
Halliburton also was the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea, off Australia. The rig there caught fire and a well leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil over 10 weeks before it was shut down. The investigation is continuing…
Federal officials declined to comment on their investigation, and Halliburton didn’t respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
Golly gee, that’s a surprise.
So, which members of Congress will now step forward and defend Halliburton? Anyone think Republican governor Bobby Jindal will point a finger?
When it comes to sleazy business dealings our nation is working hard at establishing new records for death and destruction.
Oil now leaking from Gulf disaster piping – UPDATED
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Oil appears not to be flowing from a sunken drilling rig and damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico, but hope was dimming as search continued for 11 workers missing in the disaster, said the U.S. Coast Guard.
“As of right now, the spill is not growing,” a U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said.
A remotely operated unmanned submarine sent down Thursday to inspect the scene found no oil leaking from the sunken Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and no oil flowing from the well, reducing the risk of a major spill, a spokeswoman said…
But 11 workers remained missing despite an intensive search and it was feared they were unable to escape the blast.
The Transocean Deepwater Horizon sank Thursday after burning since Tuesday following an explosion while trying to temporarily cap a new well drilled for BP 42 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana.
The blast occurred about 10 p.m. CDT Tuesday as the rig was capping a discovery well pending production, company officials said. Some 115 of the 126 workers on board at the time of the explosion were rescued.
I’m truly glad to see that the blowout protection systems appear to be working.
Obviously not as designed – for that would have prevented the explosion and resulting fire, loss of life and the rig. But, one of the critical portions of such systems is closing the wellhead and preventing an oil spill.
Folks will still need to get down to the bottom and properly cap the well. No doubt the process will include drilling an ancillary well to access the original production holes.
UPDATE: Capping the well acquires a higher priority now that risers and drill pipe from the wellhead are leaking oil at a rate approximated at 1000 barrels a day.
This is a serious rate – and although the blowout protection system did its job, the drill rig components failed as a result of the explosion and mechanical forces exerted on the drilling system.
