U.S. Offshore Oil Drilling Rule Planned
The United States is planning to impose a major new regulation on offshore oil and gas drilling to try to prevent the kind of explosions that caused the catastrophic BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing Obama administration officials. The Interior Department could make the announcement as early as Monday, the paper said. It is timed to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the BP disaster, which killed 11 men and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the gulf. The rule is expected to tighten safety requirements on blowout preventers, devices that are the last line of protection to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells, the Times reported. The White House did not immediatley respond to a request for comment.
Halt Arctic Oil Drilling Urges UK Parliamentary Committee
The Environmental Audit Committee has published the report of its inquiry into Protecting the Arctic. "The oil companies should come clean and admit that dealing with an oil spill in the icy extremes of the Arctic would be exceptionally difficult. The infrastructure to mount a big clean-up operation is simply not in place and conventional oil spill response techniques have not been proven to work in such severe conditions. Drilling is only currently feasible in the Arctic during a short summer window when it is relatively ice-free. The report also looks at the effect that climate change is having on the Arctic. It warns that a collapse in summer Arctic sea-ice…
BP Claims Progress on Long-Term Solution
According to a June 13 report from MarketWatch, BP PLC said it was taking steps to implement a more permanent arrangement to capture the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, as U.S. officials continued to demand more compensation for the spill. Equipment had been installed and put in place over the weekend as BP worked to put together a system with the flexibility to respond to adverse weather conditions, such as a hurricane, and a bigger storage capacity, BP said. In addition, Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc. said late on June 13 that one of its three offshore oil and gas production facilities was contracted by BP to process and offload crude oil and associated gas. (Source: MarketWatch)
BP to Burn Off Some Collected Oil
According to a June 10 report from Reuters, BPwill begin burning up to 10,000 barrels a day of oil from its Gulf of Mexico leak possibly as early as Monday, June 14, a company executive said. The British energy giant is collecting oil spewing from its blown-out seabed well through a containment cap and plans to test a second system to capture more oil over the weekend, Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president of exploration and production, said in a telephone briefing. BP said the cap system atop the well collected 15,800 barrels (660,000 gallons/2.5 million liters) of oil on Wednesday, June 9, a small increase over the 15,010 barrels captured the day before. (Source: Reuters)
BP Ships Second Containment Dome to Gulf Spill Site
According to a May 11 report from Reuters, BP Plc said it has finished building a smaller dome designed to trap oil spewing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and plans to try placing it over the relentless leak. This "top hat" dome was taken out to sea by ship from Port Fourchon in southeastern Louisiana, where it was made. Robotic submarines will then make preparations before the containment structure is put into place. (Source: Reuters)
