Gulf Of Mexico News

Gulf of Mexico (GoM) Lease Sale 253 in New Orleans generated over $159 million in high bids for 151 tracts covering 835,000 acres in federal waters.Twenty-seven companies participated in the lease sale, submitting approximately $175 million in bids, said Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).“We are excited about the results from today’s lease sale, which show a continued upward trend for the year. The total from today’s lease sale and the March sale is the highest since 2015 for high bids,” said Interior’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Andrea Travnicek.

Seabulk Tankers, a subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings, has announced the successful delivery of its first methanol parcel chemical shipment aboard the articulated tug-barge (“ATB”) Sea-Power/Sea-Chem I.The Sea-Power/Sea-Chem I loaded a 10,500 metric ton methanol parcel in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and discharged the parcel in Charleston, South Carolina and Chesapeake, Virginia. The vessel can load up to 30,000 metric tons of cargo into eleven segregations and is equipped with stainless steel cargo piping and MarineLINE 784 cargo tank coating. She is one of the most modern, fuel efficient, and capable chemical parcel vessels in the Jones Act fleet today.Methanol is a liquid chemical produced from conventional fossil sources as well as sustainable raw materials like biomass…

Norwegean surveying services company TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company (TGS) has been awarded a five-year contract for Digital Well Log Data Processing with the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), a federal agency tasked with overseeing offshore oil and gas activities.TGS has been providing Digital Well Log Data Processing services to BSEE since 2004, said the provider of multi-client geoscience data to oil and gas Exploration and Production companies worldwide.BSEE requires complete…

Container volume at Port Houston surged in the first half of 2019, rising 12 percent compared to that period last year. According to the Executive Director Roger Guenther the port facilities have handled nearly 1.5 Million TEU through the first half of 2019.The Houston ship channel also said in a press release that , the Port Commission awarded a contract not to exceed $39.7 million to Archer Western Construction, the top-ranked proposer among four finalists. A total of 53 companies…

Enterprise Products Partners LP said on Wednesday it expects to take about two years to construct its oil export project called Sea Port Oil Terminal, or SPOT, in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.Permitting for the terminal was expected to reach the final stages by the end of the first quarter of 2020 and final approval was expected during the second quarter, a company executive said on its second quarter earnings call.Enterprise Products signed long-term agreements with Chevron Corp to support the development of SPOT…

Rear Adm. John Nadeau, who recently took command of the Eighth Coast Guard District in New Orleans, convened a formal investigation last week for the incident that occurred onboard the offshore production facility Auger, June 30, 2019.Crewmembers aboard the Auger were testing the facility’s lifeboat recovery system when a malfunction occurred resulting in the loss of two lives. The Auger is located 210 miles southwest of New Orleans and is responsible for the production of oil.“The Coast Guard is committed to finding the facts that led to this tragedy,” said Nadeau.

The U.S. Navy’s newest America-class amphibious assault ship, the future USS Tripoli (LHA 7), successfully completed builder’s trials, said Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII).America’s largest military shipbuilding company said in a press release that the second ship in the America class spent four days at sea in the Gulf of Mexico, testing the ship’s main propulsion, combat and other systems before returning to HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division.Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias said: “Congratulations to the Navy and Ingalls team for a solid LHA 7 builder’s trials.

U.S. oil companies on Monday began restoring some of the more than nearly 74% production shut at U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead of Hurricane Barry, the U.S. offshore drilling regulator said.There was 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil production off line in the U.S.-regulated areas of the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, about 80,000 barrels less than on Sunday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).Workers also were returning to the more than 280 production platforms that had been evacuated.

In 1941, geologist Orval Lester Brace stated “it may be tentatively assumed that the Gulf of Mexico is a potential source of salt-dome oil. Whether or not it will be economically feasible to explore these waters for the domes that must exist is a question for the future to answer.”  The future hypothesized by Mr. Brace was not nearly as far off as it seemed. Less than six years after his proclamation, Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, along with Phillips Petroleum, Stanolind Oil and Gas Co…

New Orleans braced for severe flooding with residents told to hunker down as a growing tropical storm in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico headed for landfall late on Friday or early on Saturday as the first Atlantic hurricane of 2019.U.S. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana late on Thursday, hours after the region's oil production was cut by half as energy companies evacuated offshore drilling facilities and a coastal refinery.Tropical Storm…

Some residents and visitors prepared to flee New Orleans on Thursday as Tropical Storm Barry closed in and city officials warned of severe flooding if it makes landfall by early Saturday as the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2019 season.The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour (64 kph) as of 10 a.m. CDT (1500 GMT) on Thursday, the National Weather Service said.Forecasters issued a storm-surge warning for a stretch of Louisiana coastline south of already-sodden New Orleans stretching from the mouth of the Atchafalaya River to Shell Beach.

Tropical Storm Barry formed on Thursday with heavy rains expected across the north-central U.S. Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center said.Barry, the second named storm of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, was located about 95 miles (150 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River at about 11 a.m. EDT with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles (65 km) per hour, the Miami-based weather forecaster said. (Reuters, Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru Editing by Bill Trott)

Invest 92-L, which may become Tropical Storm Barry by Thursday, is becoming better organized this morning as satellite imagery and surface weather observations indicate that a circulation seems to be developing over the northeastern Gulf of Mexico.In addition, it appears that the deeper thunderstorm activity is occurring offshore and it appears that Invest 92-L is located further south than what many of the model guidance members have indicated in their forecasts.

Swedish global engineering group Trelleborg's  offshore operation has been awarded a major multi-million USD contract by Mexican state-owned petroleum company, Pemex, for Elastopipe.Elastopipe, a patented flexible piping system developed for transporting a variety of fluids, will be installed on board the Abkatun A complex in the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico.Morten Kristensen, Business Group Director at Trelleborg’s offshore facility in Norway, said: “This is our first contract made directly with Pemex and the largest contract in our history for Trelleborg’s Elastopipe system.

Resolve Marine Group was awarded the prestigious AMVER (Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue System) Award for work done by privately funded Emergency Response Salvage Tug the Resolve Pioneer.It was presented to Resolve by the United States Coast Guard Commandant, Admiral Karl Schultz at the close of National Maritime Day and the NAMEPA Safety at Sea conference at the Press Club in Washington D.C. on May 26, and recognized the work done by the Resolve Pioneer under the AMVER system. The global AMVER network is more than 60 years old.

Spanning 35 exciting years, USMI’s core values of Family, Integrity and Quality have served the firm and its military customers well. The next 35 promise to be just as compelling.Little more than one month ago, on April 16, 2019, Gulfport, MS-based United States Marine Inc. (USMI) celebrated its 35th anniversary of continuous Department of Defense production, with hopes of many more years to come. According to CEO and President Barry Dreyfus, Jr., they’ll do just that by exceeding customer expectations by adhering to USMI’s core values of Family, Integrity and, of course, Quality.

Energy services company Shawcor’s pipe coating division has entered into several contracts with an international EPC contractor to provide coating services for offshore pipeline projects.The projects include: Petrobras’ Mero in Brazil; ConocoPhillips’ Tor 2 in Norway; BP’s Atlantis in the Gulf of Mexico; Energean’s Karish in the Mediterranean Sea; Shell’s Powernap in the Gulf of Mexico; Equinor’s P1 and Duva in Norway.These projects will be executed within Shawcor’s network of coating facilities…

As spot prices in the region have remained near or below zero, natural gas flaring and venting in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico reached a new all-time high in the first quarter of 2019, averaging as much as 661 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd).According to research conducted by Rystad Energy,  this widespread waste of a valuable commodity is the result of persistent infrastructure challenges, a lack of sufficient takeaway capacity and an unexpected outage on a key…

MarineTraffic is partnering with exactEarth to deliver additional real-time information to its users.The additional satellite data compliments the MarineTraffic coastal receiver network: the world's largest and most extensive system consisting of 3,500 points of presence allowing for real-time vessel tracking data of most of the global shipping fleet.  The addition of exactEarth data to the existing satellite dataset on MarineTraffic will particularly enhance the visibility of vessels in both the Gulf of Mexico and the South China Sea.

U.S. total oil production, which is already off to an amazing start in 2019,  is on track to set another record for this year.New records are expected both when the final numbers for May emerge and at the end of the year, said Rystad Energy.The energy research and business intelligence company is raising its forecast for US crude output to 13.4 million barrels per day (bpd) by December 2019. For May 2019, our research and calculations point to crude oil production averaging 12.5 million bpd. Both are new all-time highs.“Our US supply projections have been revised up yet again.

Swedish manufacturer Cimco Marine has developed the world’s first 200hp diesel marine outboard – named the OXE Diesel – for maritime security agencies, yacht tenders, municipalities and military applications.As Trace Laborde, Marine Manager for Laborde Products, said, “The OXE diesel is the complete package, a true diesel engine. It’s great for any maritime application that requires fuel efficiency, simple maintenance, compliance with all European and EPA Tier 3 regulations, and unmatched performance.

Texas-based midstreamer Howard Energy Partners (Hep) announced that it’s completed the expansions of its bulk liquid terminal facilities in Port Arthur and Corpus Christi, Texas.The completion of these projects increases HEP’s Gulf Coast terminal storage capacity to 2.6 million barrels with three ship docks, three barge docks, unit train loading capacity for up to two trains per day, and direct pipeline connectivity through wholly-owned pipelines to seven refineries. HEP began operating terminal facilities in mid-2014.“The substantial expansions at our Port Arthur and Corpus Christi facilities signify HEP’s commitment to designing and constructing fully-engineered facilities that are tailored to meet the exact needs of our customers…

A ‘work in progress,’ the North American brown water, shallow draft sectors have experienced a tumultuous year of evolution, changing market conditions, a rapidly shifting regulatory environment and new opportunities. Anything but boring; and within the pages of Maritime Reporter’ & Engineering News’ Annual Yearbook, Joseph Keefe, editor of sister-publication MarineNews, takes a deep dive into the issues driving the domestic waterfront.Workboat EmissionsMore than one year ago, Volkswagon learned the ultimate (and painful) meaning of the iconic U.S.