Allowed Oil News

South Korean authorities have seized a Panama-flagged vessel suspected of transferring oil products to North Korea in violation of international sanctions, a customs official said on Sunday. The seizure was the second to be revealed by South Korea within a few days, as the United Nations steps up efforts to squeeze essential oil supplies to the reclusive North following its nuclear or ballistic missile tests. The ship, KOTI, was seized at Pyeongtaek-Dangjin port, the official told Reuters, without elaborating, due to the sensitivity of the issue.

China on Friday denied reports it has been illicitly selling oil products to North Korea after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was not happy that China had allowed oil to reach the isolated nation. Trump said on Twitter the previous day that China had been "caught" allowing oil into North Korea and that would prevent "a friendly solution" to the crisis over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes that it conducts in defiance of heavy U.N. Security Council sanctions. "I have been soft on China because the only thing more important to me than trade is war…

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has withdrawn an Obama-era proposal to modify a law that governs shipping, which would have revoked waivers that make it easier for oil and gas operators to skirt restrictions, according to an agency bulletin published Wednesday. For nearly 40 years the CBP has provided exemptions to the Jones Act, which mandates the use of U.S.-flagged vessels to transport merchandise between U.S. coasts. The exemptions have allowed oil and gas operators to use often cheaper, tax-free, or more readily available foreign flagged vessels. The CBP has weighed revoking these waivers after President Barack Obama's administration proposed to put them on the chopping block two days before President Donald Trump took office.

An oil tanker left the Libyan port of Ras Lanuf for Italy early on Wednesday with the first crude export cargo from the terminal since at least late 2014, boosting hopes of reviving Libya's battered oil output. The port manager of Ras Lanuf said a second tanker was preparing to load at the terminal, one of four seized on Sept. 11-12 by eastern Libyan forces loyal to military leader Khalifa Haftar. Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) has welcomed a promise by Haftar's forces to allow the NOC to control the ports.

The Coast Guard and California Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response are continuing their investigation of an oil spill that occurred on Sunday in the Los Angeles Harbor. A unified command has been established that includes the Coast Guard, California Fish and Wildlife, and the responsible party. Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach command center received a report at 6:30 p.m., Sunday, of an unknown quantity of oil in the vicinity of the 577-foot cargo ship, Istra Ace. The ship was reported to have been leaking heavy fuel in the Cerritos channel at Berth 198. Oil was also observed throughout portions of Cerritos Channel, where booming strategies have been employed.

Norwegian firm DNO expects its first shipment of oil from Kurdistan to be sold on the international market by the end of the year and said it was committed to its operations in the region despite the recent flare-up in violence. The firm could until recently only sell oil on the local Iraqi market, at lower prices than it would have got on the international oil market, due to a long constitutional fight between the region and Baghdad over independent oil sales. That changed earlier this month when the Kurdish Regional Government allowed oil firms to seek out international buyers. Oil revenue is a lifeline for the KRG, whose peshmerga fighters are fighting Islamic State militants.

Exxon Mobil Corp is considering a multi-billion-dollar plan to expand its Beaumont, Texas, refinery into the country's largest, the first major refining investment of the U.S. shale oil boom, people with knowledge of the deliberations said. The expansion of the 344,600 barrel-per-day (bpd) Beaumont refinery, if carried out, would be completed by 2020 and potentially double its size with the addition of a third crude distillation unit (CDU), the sources said. More modest near-term projects to renew and expand so-called coking units to help refine more heavy crude already are under way, they said. If Exxon presses ahead, the investment would be a further indication that the American oil giant is breaking ranks with many of its big global rivals…

It appears that the long-held promise of deepwater offshore discovery and recovery is well-positioned to pay off, particularly in the face of $30+ barrels of oil. As technology has increasingly allowed oil companies and offshore drilling firms to more accurately find and evaluate potential drilling hot spots, there has been a fervor for the development of deepwater drilling equipment and design of offshore supply vessels to support the operation. The booming global deepwater oil industry is on course to outpace supply of offshore development hardware in the next two years, according to an analysts' report, as reported in the October 30 edition of Maritime Week, sister-publication to Maritime Reporter & Engineering News.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office San Francisco Bay, the California Department of Fish and Game Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) and Titan Maritime, Inc. continue their steady progress on the assessment and oil removal operations from the sunken 468 ft. cargo ship S.S. Jacob Luckenbach , which sank 50 years ago, 17 miles West of San Francisco. Despite the challenges and risks involved with the operation, the responders have identified 26 tanks and spaces on the wreck containing about 132,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil. To date, about 12,000 gallons of oil have been recovered. During the assessment, many fuel tanks were found to have badly corroded vent pipes which allowed oil to slowly leak into the cargo holds.