On April 20, 2010, an explosion and fire on the Transocean drilling rig Deepwater Horizon caused the deaths of 11 rig workers. The subsequent blowout flowed uncontrolled to the Gulf of Mexico, ultimately spilling an estimated 5 million barrels of crude oil over the next 100 days. The regulatory aftermath continues to this day. “Vladimir” wrote dozens of diaries at RedState on the engineering, environmental, | Read More »
In his speech at Georgetown University this week, President Obama acknowledged the alarming increases in prices at the gas pump, which in many states are approaching $4 per gallon. The president restated some vague platitudes about the need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but offered no concrete plans to rein in those prices, which are putting a strain on family budgets across the | Read More »
The White House Blog, in a post entitled “Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production”, lays out the case for the Obama Administration as a long-time supporter of domestic oil and gas: One area where we have focused our efforts since the start of the administration – long before this current spike – is increasing responsible domestic energy production – including oil and gas. In fact, | Read More »
This press release is the biggest load of hooey I’ve seen for a while. The Department of the Interior wants to create two new agencies to remedy what they term “conflicting missions” within a single agency. Hooey. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael R. Bromwich today announced the structures and | Read More »
As many of you know, your humble correspondent is a veteran of 32 years of service in the oil and gas industry, currently serving as the operations manager for a small Gulf of Mexico exploration and production company. This week, the President’s Oil Spill Commission published its 380-page report on the BP blowout and spill on the Deepwater Horizon. I won’t pretend to have read | Read More »
Offshore oil and gas wells typically are able to produce at high rates at the beginning of their lives. Reserves are not infinite, so that means a rapid natural rate of decline as reserves deplete. “Reserve replacement” is a big issue; we often say that every day that you don’t replace production in the oilfield means you’re just slowly going out of business. How do | 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 »
As Friday’s House recess deadline looms, the CLEAR Act is rushing toward a floor vote. The CLEAR Act was supposed to fix whatever went wrong with Federal oversight of the Deepwater Horizon. One provision of the bill, offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), would have set up a Congressional commission of petroleum engineering experts to investigate the accident. This proposal was accepted unanimously in committee | Read More »
According to a new Bloomberg poll, American public opinion on the BP oil spill reflects common sense and a rejection of the Obama Administration’s legalistic overreaction. While public objections to a drilling ban echo the views of Republican leaders such as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the sentiment is strong regardless of political leaning: 85 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of independents and 65 percent | Read More »
A “new and improved” version of Secretary Salazar’s Deepwater offshore drilling ban was unveiled today. There seems to be little practical difference between this ban and the one that has been stayed by the courts as “arbitrary and capricious”. That hasn’t deterred Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) from opening his yap and exposing his utter lack of a grasp on the issue, quite a gaffe for | Read More »
Judge Martin Feldman of the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans, hearing the case of Hornbeck v. Salazar, has blocked the President’s moratorium on all drilling in water depths greater than 500 feet. The White House is expected to appeal the ruling immediately. H/T Artie, for d’most part
Peer-review, schmeer-review. If Obama and Salazar wanted to cripple the domestic oil and gas industry and the very-red Gulf Coast states that depend on offshore drilling, they couldn’t find a better way to do it than to impose a six-month (at least) moratorium on all deepwater drilling, including the unprecedented step of shutting down operations on wells that were already underway. But they couldn’t just | Read More »
In one of the bigger ‘duh!’ headlines of the year, the Times-Picayune observes: Offshore drilling ban could be a blow to Louisiana economy The president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement late last week to halt all deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico “at the first safe stopping point” while the Interior Department figures out what regulatory changes are necessary for offshore oil prospecting | Read More »
It’s worse than a hurricane or an oil spill. This one’s intentional and man-made, done with the stroke of a pen. It will cripple our region. Sec. Salazar Details Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling Moratorium Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters this afternoon that the Obama Administration is ordering a moratorium on all off-shore oil and gas drilling activity from floating drilling rigs until the | Read More »
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