#offshore drilling

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden moved on Monday to block future oil and natural gas drilling and protect around 625 million acres of U.S. ocean, including the entire East Coast offshore as well as some areas off the West Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea. “My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a  statement. “It is not worth the risks. … Now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.”

Biden is doing this under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, making the move harder for President-elect Donald Trump to reverse. Revoking the action would require congressional approval. “Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations,” Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental nonprofit Oceana, said in a statement. Predictably, the oil and gas industry had a different take. Biden’s move was “significant and catastrophic,” said Ron Neal, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America Offshore Committee, an industry lobbying group.

And while Axios reports that most of the areas under the new protection “are locations that the oil and gas industry had not shown strong interest in for development,” the Trump team is still acting very exasperated about the whole affair.

Biden’s ban was “a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told media outlets. “Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill." "It's ridiculous,” Trump said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” on Monday. “I'll unban it immediately. I will unban it. I have the right to unban it immediately.” How he plans to “unban” this, though, is not yet known. The Biden administration has spent considerable time “Trump-proofing” its domestic accomplishments. This includes moving to push through aid for Ukraine before they fall under the incoming Trump administration’s discretion. 

President Joe Biden protects coastal communities by banning offshore drilling along the entire East Coast offshore as well as some areas off the West Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.

[saywhat-politics]

Donald Trump's spokeswoman has said that President Joe Biden's move to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S coastal waters is "disgraceful."

"This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices," Karoline Leavitt wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

"Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill."

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Mother Jones:

Green advocacy groups filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration on Wednesday, marking the first environmental legal challenges against the president’s second administration.

Both focus on the Trump administration’s moves to open up more of US waters to oil and gas drilling, which the plaintiffs say are illegal.

In the first lawsuit, local and national organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Louisiana-based Healthy Gulf, and the Northern Alaska Environmental Center took aim at the president’s revocation of Joe Biden-era protections for 265 million acres of federal waters from future fossil fuel leasing. Trump signed an order withdrawing the protections just hours into his second term.

Another related challenge, filed by many of the same groups, calls for a court to reinstate a 2021 decision affirming protections from nearly 130 million acres in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

“The Arctic Ocean has been protected from US drilling for nearly a decade, and those protections have been affirmed by the federal courts,” said Sierra Weaver, a senior attorney at the organization Defenders of Wildlife, which is a plaintiff in the case. “Though these coastlines have been protected, the administration is showing no restraint in seeking to hand off some of our most fragile and pristine landscapes for the oil industry’s profit.”

The lawsuits will probably be the first of hundreds of environmental lawsuits filed by green groups against the Trump administration. During his first weeks in office, Trump has already rolled back a swath of Biden-era environmental protections while freezing green spending programs—part of his pledge to boost the fossil fuel industry.

Trump says the US must boost fossil fuels—which are responsible for the vast majority of global warming—to meet demand and ensure that the United States remains a global energy leader. The US is currently producing more oil and gas than any other country in history.

[gwydionmisha]

Biden should have done this four years ago, but doing it at all adds to things Trump has to remember to undo. Anything that slows Trump even a little is still something, given how lazy he is and the long list of things he has planned.

[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™.

[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."

[alyfoxxxen]

Climate Groups Sue Over Trump’s Orders to Expand Offshore Drilling – Mother Jones

[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

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[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.

[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™.

[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.