Oil Deposit News

Developments in marine power today are centered on ever tightening legislative mandate which increasingly aim to dramatically reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions to the environment. While the holy grail of being truly ‘emissions free’ is still not feasible, there is much concurrent work in industry and academia to develop and source the fuels, the machinery technology, the logistical infrastructure and the business case for solutions that will meet the 2050 50% emission reduction mandates from the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The April 2010 Gulf of Mexico massive oil spill needed immediate external support, expertise, solutions and equipment to assist in the containment and clean-up efforts. Finnish based Lamor Corporation immediately set its action plans into motion and within 36 hours, through its global network, the company airlifted its arsenal of equipment and key personnel to the scene. The blown-out well on the ocean floor off Louisiana threatened the entire ecosystem in the area as well as the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people at a rate of over 5,000 barrels of leaking crude oil per day.

The first in a new fleet of Russian icebreaker oil tankers being built in St. Petersburg is reported to have successfully completed Arctic trials. Dmitry Yakovenko, marketing head of the Admiralteisky shipyard in St Petersburg, said the Astrakhan had now loaded over 17,000 tons of crude oil from the Kolguyevo oil deposit in the Kara Sea and was bound for Rotterdam. He said the shipyard had received two lines of credit from Germany and Norway to build five of the new class of icebreaker tankers, obliging it to buy some German and some Norwegian equipment. LUKOIL, Russia's largest oil company, has commissioned the fleet for its own use. The tankers can carry 20,000 tons of crude each. Four others are to be built, with the second due in 2001.

Kazakhstan's first deputy prime minister expects OKIOC, a consortium exploring the giant offshore Kashagan oil deposit, to appoint a project operator within two weeks. Kashagan is seen as potentially the largest oil find in the world in the last 30 years, and could make the vast Central Asian nation of 15 million a leading world oil producer within the next 20 years. But development of the field is still years away, and the nine-member Offshore Kazakhstan International Oil Company (OKIOC) has yet to name an operator for the project. First Deputy Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov said he saw some progress on issue. "I believe the decision on the operator can be expected within the next 15 days," he said.