#Offshore drilling

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the Anchorage Daily News:

A federal judge on Tuesday overturned a 2022 lease sale held in Cook Inlet’s federal waters southwest of Anchorage.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason sides with conservation groups who had argued that the environmental review leading to the sale was inadequate. The groups argued that the government did not fully analyze the impacts of potential oil and gas activity from the lease sale to Cook Inlet’s endangered beluga whales, among other shortcomings.

Gleason also suspended the single lease acquired by an oil company in the sale until the deficiencies are fixed, according to the 49-page decision released Tuesday.

The Interior Department held the lease sale in December 2022, offering nearly 1 million acres of federal waters in Cook Inlet to companies for potential oil and gas drilling.

Hilcorp acquired the lone tract in the auction for $64,000, out of 193 tracts offered. Though natural gas from Cook Inlet is the primary source of heat and electricity in Southcentral Alaska, lease sales in state and federal waters over many years have generally sparked little to no interest.

The lease sale was mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Joe Biden in 2022, after the Biden administration had initially canceled the auction, citing a lack of industry interest. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a former Democrat who registered as an independent this spring, had insisted that the provision be included in the act.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Natural Resources Defense Council filed the lawsuit in 2022 with Earthjustice, on behalf of Cook Inletkeeper, Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, and Alaska Community Action on Toxics. The state of Alaska intervened in the case on the side of the federal government.

[panelswithoutpeople]

The Underwater Welder

by Jeff Lemire

[indizombie]

The idea of the erasure, the annihilation, of Palestinians is being clearly articulated by Israeli political and military officials. A US lawyer who has brought a case against the Biden administration for its “failure to prevent genocide”—which is a crime, too—spoke of how rare it is for genocidal intent to be so clearly and publicly articulated. Once they have achieved that goal, perhaps the plan is to have museums showcasing Palestinian culture and handicrafts, restaurants serving ethnic Palestinian food, maybe a Sound and Light show of how lively Old Gaza used to be—in the new Gaza Harbour at the head of the Ben Gurion canal project, which is supposedly being planned to rival the Suez Canal. Allegedly contracts for offshore drilling are already being signed.

Arundhati Roy, ‘Our country has lost its moral compass’, Hindu

[poojagblog-blog]

The global Digital Oilfield Market is expected to reach USD 43.0 billion by 2029 from USD 30.1 billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™.

[sebastien-iglesias]

Environement design for the musical project "Kids of the Apocalypse" (https://www.kidsoftheapocalypse.com)

[plethoraworldatlas]

Climate action groups are vehemently rejecting the Biden administration's claim that the approval of a new offshore oil terminal—planned to be the largest in the U.S.—is in the "national interest," after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the project had met several federal requirements and could begin operations by 2027.

The agency's Maritime Administration said last week that Enterprise Product Partners, a Houston-based pipeline company, had been granted a deepwater port license to build the Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) near Freeport, Texas following a five-year federal review process.

The federal government determined the $1.8 billion terminal project had undergone sufficient environmental impact reviews and would overall benefit the country—even as it was projected by the Sierra Club, which has fought SPOT for several years, to emit greenhouse gases equivalent to those of nearly 90 coal-fired power plants.

"The evidence is clear that SPOT would be catastrophic to the climate, wildlife, and frontline communities of the Gulf," said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney with the Sierra Club. "It threatens the future existence of the endangered Rice's whale with a population of less than fifty, and its ozone pollution would compromise the health of thousands of Gulf residents who have endured decades of fossil fuel industry pollution. Make no mistake, SPOT is not in the national interest."

The project is expected to include two pipelines that would carry crude oil to the deepwater port each day, enabling the export of 2 million barrels of crude oil, loaded onto two supertankers at once, daily.

"Nothing about this project is in alignment with Biden's climate and environmental justice goals," said Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks. "The communities that will be impacted by SPOT have once again been ignored and will be forced to live with the threat of more oil spills, explosions, and pollution. The best way to protect the public and the climate from the harms of oil is to keep it in the ground."

[free-kaze]

Offshore drilling has long been a cornerstone of the global energy industry, powering economies and meeting the world's growing demand for hydrocarbons

[afsana]

Leading Offshore Drilling Companies in UAE - TradersFind

Discover offshore drilling companies in UAE on TradersFind. Explore a curated list of companies providing top-notch solutions, complete with detailed product information, to ensure successful offshore operations. Contact Now!

[faultfalha]

The shadows of West Africa crept closer and closer. Two Borr Drilling Jack-Up rigs spread their wings, hovering in anticipation. The deafening stillness of the night was interrupted only by the whispering of the wind, a sinister warning off what was to come. These two ships had been chosen for a mysterious purpose, leading to a new and unknown destiny. Nothing could prepare them for what lay ahead.

[dsiddhant]

CHICAGO , Aug. 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Artificial Lift Market is projected to reach USD 9.0 billion in 2028 from USD 7.3 billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 4.4% according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™.

[rajgroup]

Stansol is a group of solvents that are devoid of chlorinated and glycol ether components and are produced via distillation of carefully chosen feedstocks. The petroleum & offshore power sector sectors utilise the de-aromatized and aromatized solvents in the Stansol family extensively.

[supplyside]

Transocean Winner aground on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland

[triupalonupalots]

Maybe the reason I liked Howl's Moving Castle so much

was because it really reminds me of an oil rig.

[poojagblog-blog]

Delray Beach, FL, Oct. 30, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global Offshore Support Vessel Market size is expected to grow from USD 25.6 billion in 2024 to USD 36.3 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 7.2% according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™. An offshore support vessel (OSV) is specially designed to support offshore exploration, drilling, production, and construction activities in the oil & gas industry. These vessels provide a range of services, such as transportation of personnel, equipment and supplies, maintenance and repair, and oil spill response. OSVs are also used for specialized tasks such as platform installation, decommissioning, seismic surveying, providing firefighting, towing, and positioning of drilling rigs and other offshore structures, and subsea construction. These vessels are equipped with dynamic positioning systems to maintain their position in rough seas and are built to withstand harsh offshore conditions. Different types of offshore support vessels are used in offshore oil & gas and offshore wind applications. OSVs play a crucial role in offshore oil & gas and offshore wind farms by enabling safe and efficient operations.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The United States District Court for the District of Maryland has tossed a flawed environmental assessment that grossly underestimated harms to endangered and threatened marine species from oil and gas drilling and exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.  

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) prepared the assessment known as a biological opinion—BiOp for short— in 2020 under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). NMFS is a federal agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The biological opinion is required to ensure that drilling and exploration for fossil fuels in the Gulf does not jeopardize endangered and threatened species, and is a prerequisite for oil and gas drilling permits auctioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior. 

That same year, Earthjustice, a national nonprofit, filed a suit challenging the biological opinion on behalf of Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the Turtle Island Restoration Network. The American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and several other groups representing the oil and gas industry intervened as defendants in the case. 

The environmental groups argued the biological opinion underestimated the potential for future oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and did not require sufficient safeguards for imperiled whales, sea turtles and other endangered and threatened marine species from industrial offshore drilling operations.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to a range of threatened marine species protected under the ESA, including the endangered Rice’s whale, which exists nowhere else on the planet. 

It also caters to much of the nation’s oil and gas extraction under federal waters known as the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). This includes a region known as the Gulf OCS that experiences a high volume of ship traffic to production platforms, tens of thousands of active wells and thousands of miles of underwater pipelines. 

In its Aug. 19 ruling, the district court agreed with the environmental groups that the biological opinion violated the law in multiple ways. Among other deficiencies, it found the opinion wrongly assumed that a catastrophic oil spill like the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon will not occur despite NMFS’ own finding that such a spill can be expected. 

The court declared the 2020 BiOp unlawful and ordered NFMS to produce a new biological opinion by December 2024.

“The new opinion should come along with more protections for the Gulf’s threatened and endangered species that are already struggling to survive in the face of an onslaught of threats, including existing oil and gas activity, climate change and others,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans program litigation director for the Center for Biological Diversity. 

[plethoraworldatlas]

The Interior Department finalized a plan today to conduct offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years. The plan offers 3 auctions between 2024 and 2029 in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I feel disgusted and incredibly let down by Biden’s offshore drilling plan. It piles more harm on already-struggling ecosystems, endangered species and the global climate,” said Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need Biden to commit to a fossil fuel phaseout, but actions like this condemn us to oil spills, climate disasters and decades of toxic harm to communities and wildlife.”

...

The IRA(Inflation Reduction Act) also ties the federal government’s ability to issue future leases for offshore wind power to offshore oil and gas leasing, requiring it to have offered at least 60 million acres to the oil industry in the one-year period prior to issuing the wind lease. But researchers have found that President Biden will exceed his goal of building 30 gigawatts of wind power capacity by 2030 without new oil leasing in a five-year plan. A separate report demonstrates that the U.S. can meet its energy needs many times over without burdening more ecosystems by utilizing already-developed or degraded land on which to build renewable energy.

The Biden administration has the legal authority to issue a plan with no new leases and to create a plan for a managed decline of fossil fuel production on existing leases.