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Noble Homer Ferrington to Drill Gabriella License Offshore Israel
Adira Energy Ltd. announces that Modiin Energy L.P, on behalf of the Gabriella License consortium, including Adira and Brownstone Energy, has executed a detailed drilling contract with Noble International Ltd (“Noble Drilling”). The Agreement provides for the drilling of the Gabriella License by the Noble Homer Ferrington semi-submersible rig prior to the government regulated spud date of June 30, 2013.
Jeffrey E. Walter, Chief Executive Officer of Adira Energy stated: “Another major milestone has been delivered to Adira’s shareholders with the signing of the Homer Ferrington rig contract. This will enable us to drill the highly anticipated Gabriella License which is Adira’s core asset. With over 110 million barrels of contingent oil resources, this project is important to Adira as well as a fundamental key in moving forward on the oil potential offshore Israel. The Homer Ferrington has drilled some of the most successful discovery wells in the Eastern Mediterranean including “Leviathan” offshore Israel and “Block 12” offshore Cyprus. ”
The Gabriella License is located approximately 10 kilometers northwest of Tel Aviv, in the waters offshore Israel. The block covers an area of approximately 392 square kilometers (97,000 acres) and is in water depths that range from 100 meters on the east side of the block to just over 425 meters on the southwest side of the block. Adira holds a 15% Working Interest in the Gabriella License plus a 15% back-in option from Modin Energy, to be exercised within six months of discovery, at cost.
How nuclear icebreakers work and the reversible ships that will replace them
The intense agitating power of the Azipods can actually help break ice from underneath
The Arctic North end of Russia is believed to hold as much as a quarter of all the world’s oil deposits – an utterly monstrous economic prize, hidden in one of the toughest and least hospitable environments on the planet. Getting to this prize, and then transporting it back to refineries, is a monolithic task that requires one of the most awe-inspiring pieces of machinery man has ever built – the nuclear icebreaker. Purpose-built to the point of being almost unseaworthy on the open waves, these goliaths smash their way through 3-meter (10-foot) thick ice crusts to create viable pathways for other vessels – but fascinating new technologies could mean the days of the dedicated icebreaker are numbered.
Where there’s a well, there’s a way. An oil well, that is. Black gold. Texas tea. And some of the world’s richest reserves of the stuff are buried beneath the beds of the Berents sea, North of Russia and well into the Arctic Circle. It’s estimated that this area holds somewhere around a quarter of all the oil reserves in the world.
But it’s an area that gets no sun at all for at least one day every year, and which is so cold that the sea itself freezes over with 2-meter (6.5-foot) thick ice for more than two thirds of the year. When it’s not frozen over, there’s 12-meter (40 foot) waves to deal with. It’s one of the world’s most extreme environments; inhospitable doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Getting resources like oil and natural gas out of the earth – and safely back to shore – would be prohibitively expensive, if the prize wasn’t worthwhile. Where these sorts of quantities of fossil fuels are concerned, however, all bets are off and just about any expense can be justified.
… and the expense we’d like to take a look at today is the nuclear-powered icebreaker – a vessel whose sole task is to smash its way through packed sea ice and clear a path for other ships to follow in.
It’s a specialist job that boats have been designed to tackle since the 1830s – and it’s interesting to note that while today’s enormous icebreakers generally use nuclear power to generate the immense thrust needed to power through the ice fields, in other ways the design hasn’t changed too much for nearly 200 years.
Related articles
- Weatherwatch: Trade traffic in Arctic waterways is increasing (guardian.co.uk)
- Fatal Fire Aboard Russian Nuclear Icebreaker (gcaptain.com)
- The Lone Icebreaker: U.S. Sovereignty in the Arctic (mb50.wordpress.com)
- Reversing U.S. Retreat from the Arctic (mb50.wordpress.com)