Monthly Archives: May 2012
Recap: Worldwide Field Development News (May 25 – May 31, 2012)
| This week the SubseaIQ team added 2 new projects and updated 13 projects. You can see all the updates made over any time period via the Project Update History search. The latest offshore field develoment news and activities are listed below for your convenience. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Obama and Energy: Collected Cartoons
From Investors.com
From The Week
From The Week
From Solid Principles
Editor’s Note: Above is a collection of political cartoons taking President Obama to task for his energy policies.
From Slate
Souece: Energy Tribune- Obama and Energy: Collected Cartoons.
LNG EXPORT: U.S. Gas Exports Put on Back Burner
By TENNILLE TRACY
The Obama administration is telling Japan and other allied countries they will have to wait before moving forward on plans to buy American natural gas, people involved in the talks said.
A dramatic increase in U.S. natural-gas production has led several U.S. companies, including Sempra Energy SRE +0.23% and Dominion Resources Inc., D +0.15% to seek permits from the Department of Energy to export gas to countries that lack free-trade agreements with the U.S. Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM -0.73% Chief Executive Rex Tillerson said Wednesday his company was looking at exporting from the U.S. Gulf Coast and Canada.
Sempra and Dominion are working with Japanese partners that want to import the gas as their country looks for new power sources. The U.S. currently exports relatively small amounts of natural gas via pipelines to Canada and Mexico, but a wave of recent export proposals marks the first time in decades that companies have sought to liquefy U.S. gas and transport it overseas.
But exports have become a hot-button topic for some lawmakers in Washington and have highlighted uncertainty about what kind of energy power the U.S. wants to become as companies unearth huge supplies of natural gas in shale rock.
“We are going to have to answer some basic questions about our role as a producer,” Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. “The fact that some of these debates have been so difficult stems from their novelty.”
Japan’s prime minister raised the gas-export issue with President Barack Obama at an April 30 meeting, one of several occasions on which Tokyo has pushed the administration.
But the U.S. has told Japan, a leading military ally in the Pacific, it will have to wait, in large part because of the political sensitivities, participants in the talks said.
“I think it’s going to require more people taking a look at it,” an administration official said, adding, “We’re very sympathetic to Japan. They’re in a very difficult situation.”
Following the disaster at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant last year, Japan pulled the plug on all of its nuclear reactors, forcing it to replace a power source that generated about 30% of its electricity. The government is studying whether to restart some of the reactors, but nuclear power is likely to play a smaller role in five or 10 years.
That is when the U.S. natural gas could start arriving, but only if the U.S. grants permits to export terminals that would liquefy the gas for shipping across the Pacific.
Japan isn’t the only country waiting. “The requests come from everywhere,” the administration official said. Natural gas is much cheaper in the U.S. than in Europe and Asia, where the fuel’s value is often tied to the price of oil. Companies importing American gas would be able to reduce costs with contracts tied to the lower U.S. prices.
Mr. Tillerson laid out the case for exports at Exxon’s shareholder meeting Wednesday, saying they would create jobs and help the U.S. trade balance. Sen. Lisa Murkowksi, a Republican from Alaska, asked President Obama in April to expedite permits for natural-gas exports. She said exports could give Alaska a market for gas from its North Slope, which lacks a gas pipeline to the lower 48 states.
Opponents, including Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and some other congressional Democrats, say the U.S. could boost its energy security by keeping its natural gas at home. Oil-and-gas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, in an interview, objected to the idea of selling the gas at a discount to global prices. “You’re kind of giving your own stuff away, and it’s stupid to do that,” said Mr. Pickens, who wants U.S. trucks to use natural gas.
Japanese officials said they recognized the Obama administration’s political challenges.
“It is difficult for the U.S. to say yes [to exports] because of the presidential election,” said Hirohide Hirai, director of the petroleum and natural-gas division of Japan’s economy ministry. “There won’t be any deal with any country before November.”
U.S. officials say they are weighing how exports would affect job creation, trade and the domestic price of natural gas. A price spike would hurt consumers and weaken a competitive advantage enjoyed by U.S. manufacturers that use natural gas as a raw material. An Energy Department assessment is due later this year, and an administration official said decisions will follow in a “timely manner.”
—Mitsuru Obe and Isabel Ordonez contributed to this article.
Write to Tennille Tracy at tennille.tracy@dowjones.com
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Pacific Drilling Receives LoA for Pacific Sharav Drillship
Pacific Drilling S.A., a fast growing company dedicated to becoming the preferred ultra-deepwater drilling contractor, has received a letter of award for the Pacific Sharav drillship, revealed the company’s CEO Chris Becket.
CEO Chris Beckett commented on the increasing demand for ultra-deepwater units: “During the early part of 2012, demand for ultra-deepwater drillships continued to strengthen, as demonstrated by the acceleration in multi-year inquiries and contract awards with increasingly higher dayrates. We expect to see market demand exceed supply well into 2014.”
He added: “In this favorable market context, the Pacific Sharav received a letter of award from a major oil company for a long term commitment. We expect to provide more details on this commitment in the coming weeks. These positive market dynamics supported our decision to order a seventh drillship, scheduled for delivery in May 2014.”
Construction of the Pacific Sharav started in March 2012 at Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea. Delivery of the rig is expected in September 2013. The vessel, of Samsung 12000 design, will be capable of operating in 12,000 ft water depth and equipped for 40,000 ft drilling depth. The ship will be able to accommodate a crew of 200.
Pacific Drilling’s fleet of seven ultra-deepwater drillships will, once completed, represent one of the youngest and most technologically advanced fleets in the world. The company currently operates four recently delivered drillships and has two additional drillships under construction and one on order at Samsung.
During the first quarter of 2012, the company invested $102 million in the construction of the fleet, including the initial payment for its seventh drillship.
“We estimate the remaining capital expenditures for our committed drillships at $1.6 billion,” read the company’s statement.
Source: Pacific Drilling Receives LoA for Pacific Sharav Drillship| Offshore Energy Today.
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USA: SCA’s Award for Excellence in Safety Goes to Bollinger Shipyards
Bollinger Shipyards, Inc. was awarded the 2011 “Award for Excellence in Safety” by the Shipbuilders Council of America for the seventh consecutive year. With focused efforts of continuous improvement, they also earned the 2011 SCA “Award for Improvement in Safety”.
Read more: Shipbuilding Tribune – USA: SCA’s Award for Excellence in Safety Goes to Bollinger Shipyards.
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SMU Report: Permitting delays & new regs stifling offshore drilling
Rig workers, like Robert Cornett, right, pause while mopping the decks on the Hercules 251. (Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle)
The offshore drilling industry is still rebounding from a five-month moratorium and new regulations after the 2010 Gulf oil spill, with consumers paying the price at the pump, according to a new report being released today.
The findings buck the conventional wisdom about a recent resurgence in offshore drilling that has caused a spike in demand for workers and a run on rigs to drill new wells.
Drilling contractors, including Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc., Noble Corp., and Rowan Cos., say they are seeing strong demand for their rigs. Energy analysts predict 10 more will float into the Gulf this year. And the number of active offshore rigs in the United States was higher at the end of April 2012 than the average total in 2009, the year before the spill (the economic decline had driven down demand that year).
But according to the new analysis, conducted by the Southern Methodist University Cox Maguire Energy Institute, high rig counts, the numbers of federal permits to drill new wells and other positive stats mask problems that could mean suppressed oil and gas production for years to come.
The study was commissioned by the Gulf Economic Survival Team, which has been lobbying for swifter permitting of offshore projects.
Read more: Fuel Fix » SMU Report: Permitting delays & new regs stifling offshore drilling.
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America’s actual health and welfare crisis
EPA rules threaten our energy, economy, health, welfare, justice, and civil rights progress.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says we face grave threats to human health, welfare and justice. She’s absolutely right. However, the dangers are not due to factory or power plant emissions, or supposed effects of “dangerous manmade global warming.”
They are the result of policies and regulations that her EPA is imposing in the name of preventing climate change and other hypothetical and exaggerated environmental problems. It is those government actions that are the gravest threat to Americans’ health, welfare, and pursuit of happiness and justice.
By hyper-regulating carbon dioxide, soot, mercury, “cross-state air pollution” from sources hundreds of miles away, and other air and water emissions, EPA intends to force numerous coal-fired power plants to shut down years before their productive life is over; sharply reduce emissions from cars, factories, refineries and other facilities, regardless of the costs; and block the construction of new coal-fired power plants, because none will be able to slash their carbon dioxide emissions to half of what average coal-fired plants now emit, without employing expensive (and nonexistent) CO2 capture and storage technologies.
EPA has also issued 588 pages of rules for hydraulic fracturing for critically needed oil and natural gas, while the Obama Administration has vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline and made 95% of all publicly owned (but government controlled) energy resources unavailable for leasing, exploration, drilling and mining.
These actions reflect President Obama’s campaign promises to “bankrupt any company that tries to build a new coal-fired power plant,” replace hydrocarbons with heavily subsidized solar, wind and biofuel energy, make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket,” advance rent-seeking crony-corporatism – and “fundamentally transform” America’s constitutional, legal, energy, economic and social structure.
Energy is the lifeblood of our nation’s economy, jobs, living standards and civil rights progress. Anything that affects energy availability, reliability and price affects every aspect of our lives. These federal diktats put bureaucrats and activists in charge of our entire economy – seriously impairing our health and welfare.
Moreover, the anti-hydrocarbon global warming “solutions” the Obama Administration is imposing will bring no real world benefits – even assuming carbon dioxide actually drives climate change. That’s largely because China, India and other developing countries are increasing their use of coal for electricity generation, and thus their CO2 emissions – far beyond our ability to reduce US emissions. These nations rightly refuse to sacrifice economic growth and poverty eradication on the altar of climate alarmism.
Even worse, the health, welfare and environmental justice benefits that EPA claims will result from its regulations are equally exaggerated and illusory. They exist only in the same dishonest computer-generated virtual reality that concocted its alleged climate change, health and environmental cataclysms, and in junk-science analyses that can best be described as borderline fraud.
Implementing EPA’s regulatory agenda will inflict severe economic dislocations and send shock waves through America’s factories, farmlands and families. Far from improving our health and welfare – they will make our economy, unemployment, living standards, health and welfare even worse.
EPA’s new automobile mileage standards alone will result in thousands of additional serious injuries and deaths every year, as cars are further downsized to meet its arbitrary 54.5 mpg requirements. Its anti-coal and anti-fracking rules will severely impact electricity generation, reliability and prices; factory, office and hospital operations and budgets; American industries’ competitiveness in global markets; employment, hiring and layoffs; and the well-being of families and entire communities. Especially for areas that depend on mining and manufacturing – and the 26 states where coal-based power generation keeps electricity rates at half of what they are in states with the least coal use and toughest renewable energy mandates (6-9 cents versus 13-17 cents per kilowatt hour) – it will be all pain, for no gain.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a White House letter to House Speaker John Boehner inadvertently acknowledged that EPA alone is still working on new regulations that the agency itself calculates will impose $105 billion in additional regulatory burdens and compliance costs. Win or lose in November, the Administration will likely impose these and other postponed rules after the elections. We, our children and grandchildren will pay for them in countless ways.
Utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit or replace older coal-fired units, says energy analyst Roger Bezdek – and another $30 billion a year for operations, maintenance and extra fuel for energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment, to generate increasingly expensive electricity.
Duke Energy’s new $3.3 billion coal gasification and “carbon dioxide capture” power plant will increase rates for its Indiana customers by some 15% the next two years. Hospitals, factories, shopping malls and school districts will have to pay an extra $150,000 a year in operating expenses for each million dollars in annual electricity bills. That’s four or five entry-level jobs that won’t be created or preserved.
Nationwide, 319 coal-fueled power plants totaling 42,895 megawatts (13% of the nation’s coal fleet and enough for 40 million homes and small businesses) are already slated to close, the Sierra Club joyfully proclaimed. Illinois families and businesses could pay 20% more for electricity by 2014, the Chicago Tribune reports. Chicago public schools may have to find an extra $2.7 million a year to keep the lights and heat on and computers running.
Higher electricity prices will further strain refineries already struggling with soaring electricity costs and EPA’s sulfur and other regulations, restrictions on refinery upgrades and construction, constraints on moving crude oil to East Coast refineries, and other compliance costs – all for dubious environmental or health benefits. Three East Coast refineries have already closed, costing thousands of jobs and causing the Department of Energy to warn that pump prices are likely to soar even higher in Eastern states.
When we include discouraged workers who have given up looking for jobs, and people who have been forced to work fewer hours or at temporary jobs, our unemployment rate is a whopping 19 percent – and double that for black and Hispanic young people. America’s labor force participation rate is at a 30-year low. Our nation’s 2011 economic growth rate was a dismal 1.7 percent.
Well over a million U.S. workers age 55 and older have now been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Not only do prospects plummet for re-employment of older workers. The longer they are unemployed, the more they are disconnected from society, the further their living standards fall, the more their physical and emotional well-being deteriorates, and the more likely they are to die prematurely.
The cumulative effect is that families have even less money to buy food, pay the rent or mortgage, repair the car or house, save for college and retirement, take a vacation – and keep people comfortable (and alive) on frigid winter nights and sweltering summer afternoons. Workers lose jobs. Health and welfare, family relationships, future prospects and psychological well-being plummet. Because they spend the highest proportion of their incomes on energy, poor and minority families suffer disproportionately.
And yet the EPA and White House regulatory agenda, regulatory onslaught and horse-blinder definition of health, welfare and justice ignore these realities – and ensure that this unconscionable situation will only get worse. In fact, the only welfare EPA’s rules will ensure is the expansion of our welfare rolls, unemployment lines and already record-setting food stamp programs.
EPA is also giving billions of taxpayer dollars to activist groups, to advance its agenda and dominate our media and hearings with false or misleading information about the costs and benefits of its programs.
Worst of all, our Congress and courts have completely abdicated their obligations to provide oversight and control of this dictatorial agency and Obama Administration. If this is the hope, change and future we can look “forward” to, our nation’s health, well-being and justice will be rolled backward.
Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.
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Recap: Worldwide Field Development News (May 18 – May 24, 2012)
| This week the SubseaIQ team added 5 new projects and updated 33 projects. You can see all the updates made over any time period via the Project Update History search. The latest offshore field develoment news and activities are listed below for your convenience.
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May 23, 2012 – Pan Pacific Petroleum, a partner on the Tui field, reported that the joint venture has further progressed evaluation of the Tui Area upside and has identified two potential development infill opportunities and two prospects, which are currently being further matured to enable the JV to decide on possible drilling plans. Subject to approval and rig availability, drilling is planned for 4Q 2012 – 1Q 2013.
May 21, 2012 – Premier Oil announced that the Dua project, a tie-in to the Chim Sao field, was formally sanctioned by Premier and Santos in April. It is expected that the necessary Vietnamese government approvals will be received during the second quarter of 2012. In the meantime, bids for FPSO modifications and the drilling rig have been received and are being evaluated. Premier continues to target 2014 for first oil.
May 21, 2012 – Otto Energy provided an update on remaining oil reserves balances at the Galoc oil field in the Philippines, performed by independent consulting firm RISC. The company confirmed the reported increase in reserves is attributable to better than expected reservoir performance to date and an extension of field life due to higher prevailing oil prices. Galoc is expected to remain in production until 2016 to 2018 on the basis of the existing two wells alone. Otto Energy estimates Contingent Resources of 1.49 MMboe (Otto share) at 2C level attributable to the Galoc Phase II development, currently progressing through Front End Engineering and Design, with a target Final Investment Decision around mid-2012.
May 21, 2012 – Wartsila Hamworthy will deliver inert gas generator units to eight FPSOs in the Santos Basin. Six of the units will be deployed for the Tupi fields with the other two being utilized for the Guara field. The first two units will undergo full scale testing at the factory in Moss prior to delivery, starting as soon as the end of December this year and up to the end of January 2015. Each of the units will be installed on the utility module on the FPSO inside a dedicated compartment. The eight FPSOs are currently under construction in Brazil.
May 21, 2012 – Total has confirmed the success of the G4 well intervention at the Elgin complex. To regain control of the well, heavy mud was pumped into the G4 well from the West Phoenix (UDW semisub). The leak was stopped, stated the company. Following the success of the well intervention, the next phase will be to re-man the Elgin complex and restart the Rowan Viking (430′ ILC) drilling rig in order to set cement plugs in the G4 well. This phase, aiming at completing the plugging and permanent abandonment procedure of the G4 well, will take several weeks. Once the first cement plug is set in the G4 well by the Rowan Viking, the drilling of the ongoing relief well with the Sedco 714 (mid-water semisub) will be stopped. In consultation with the appropriate authorities, it has been decided that drilling a second relief well by the Rowan Gorilla V (400′ ILC) jackup is no longer necessary and has therefore been cancelled.
May 21, 2012 – E.ON reported that progress has been made offshore on the Huntington field in the UK sector of the North Sea. The production wells drilled to date have exceeded expectations and development drilling is expected to be completed in July. The infill pipeline is now being laid and a two month installation FPSO window, commencing on September 1, has been secured. Previously announced delays to the upgrade of the FPSO have been addressed by increasing the manpower in the yard. The operator continues to forecast fourth quarter for first oil with an expected plateau production rate of 25,000 bopd.
May 22, 2012 – Shell has begun development drilling at its Cardamom field in Garden Banks Block 427 using the Noble Jim Thompson (DW semisub). The rig will drill two wells, with each well taking about 90 days. Both wells will be tied-back to the Auger TLP. Shell’s DOCD for Cardamom includes drilling four development wells and permits for all wells have been approved.Related articles
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Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 