…but the rate of OSHA recordable incidents in the oil and gas extraction industry is considerably less than most industries, including retailing, libraries and tortilla manufacturing. [As an aside, yesterday’s fire on Mariner’s Vermilion Block 380 A Platform sparked renewed calls for the higher levels of government regulation of the rigs (it wasn’t a rig), with some calling for an outright end to offshore drilling | Read More »
The Obama Administration has filed some 27,000 pages of documents in Federal court which disclose the process by which it decided to forge ahead with a deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, in spite of expert advice, public opinion and a Federal judge’s ruling. The documents also show that the Administration stonewalled a U.S. Senator’s request for information, a point apparently lost on | Read More »
On one hand, Mr. Obama’s “Worst Oil Spill in History” theme serves as pretext for eviscerating the offshore petroleum industry, an industry that, until this spring, was relatively healthy despite the recession. By doing so, he may suck the economic life out of four very red Gulf States. On the other hand, Energy Czar Carol Browner has joined the “Where has the oil gone?” chorus, | Read More »
Remember back when BP severed the riser, so they could install the cap, the one that finally controlled the spill? Here is a photo taken by an ROV just after the severing was completed. The photo shows the outer shell of the riser, at one time a 21-inch cylinder, collapsed like a Coke can by the severing tool. Inside the collapsed riser are what appear | Read More »
Interior Secretary Salazar imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling until November 30, contrary to the recommendation of a panel of experts from the National Academy of Engineering. For operations on the shallow water Shelf, the administration maintains, no official moratorium is in place. After all, the Shelf still enjoys a forty-year history of relatively safe and clean operations that is still intact, being several orders | Read More »
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