Topics: ATP Oil and Gas completes drilling on a Gulf of Mexico well. BP asks court to reject some spill claims. MS Gulf Coast hopes tourism returns to normal after spill. BP works a deal with Polish government. Putin says Russia could work with Shell in Arctic. Houston firm meets resistance in Alaskan waters. Above-normal hurricane season predicted. Keystone pipeline will solve all our problems. BP accused of mismanaging retirement funds. Shipping tycoon says he's being attacked out of revenge.
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Well... (pardon the pun) the process to re-start drilling in the Gulf after the gusher was a bit slow, but you just can't keep a good life-and-environment-destroying oligarchy down...
ATP Oil & Gas has completed the drilling phase of a deep-water well in Mississippi Canyon Block 941 A-2 of the Gulf of Mexico. The well, about 90 miles south of Venice, LA, in 4000 feet of water, has had pay sands confirmed - meaning there is oil there.
ATP will now run casing, remove the drilling riser and install the production rig. Production is expected to begin before the end of the year.
ATP received the third permit (and one of two for this company) to drill in the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and was the first to resume drilling.
“Our preparedness enabled us to swiftly assemble a crew and commence testing the BOP stack within 36 hours of obtaining the permit,” said ATP Chairman and CEO T. Paul Bulmahn. “We look forward to production from this well during the third quarter through the state-of-the-art ATP Titan facility.”
So far BOEMRE has approved 37 permits for 14 deepwater wells.There are 23 permits pending and 22 permits that have been returned to operators with requests for additional information.
Shell Oil reports it is halfway down its first deepwater exploratory well since the moratorium, called Cardamom Deep.
Cardamom? Where the hell do they get these names? Did they strike spice, maybe? Well, the spice must flow...
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Cue the weasels...
BP asks court to reject some spill claims.
BP's lawyers argued in US District Court last week that victims of the BP gusher can only sue the company under an extremely restricted set of rules governing offshore spills, and that any lawsuits filed under statutes other than that should be dismissed.
Legal piranhas also maintain that all claimants must go through the channels for payment from the $20 billion dollar fund earmarked for restitution, and may only make additional claims after those avenues have been exhausted.
“BP’s position is not that every single claim needs to be dismissed,” Andrew Langan, BP’s lawyer, told U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier at today’s hearing. Claims that have been improperly filed or not yet presented to BP’s trust fund should be dismissed, he said.
Environmentalists and lawyers for spill victims told Barbier today that none of the economic-damage claims or defendants should be dismissed at this stage of the litigation. They asked him to allow all claims to proceed to trial at the earliest possible date.
Assholes...
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With the first holiday weekend of the summer cranking up, the Mississippi Gulf Coast hopes tourism returns to normal after the oil spill. The number of visitors over the holiday could give folks who rely on tourism for their livelihood an idea of what this summer will be like.
Brent Pierotich, working his family's business, says so far, so good.
"We all need it," said Pierotich, while manning a cash register at Souvenir City, the bright pink building with a huge open-mouthed alligator head protruding from the front that has become a landmark on Highway 90 since it first opened in 1973. "We didn't reopen after Hurricane Katrina until 2009."
Pierotich said business was beginning to recover after Katrina, but was smacked by the BP spill, as tourists stayed away. But the influx of oil spill workers, however, did not indicate just how strong the drop in visitors was.
Linda Hornsby, executive director of the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association, says making an estimate was difficult.
"We got a false reading for last summer," Hornsby said. "It actually showed an increased occupancy, but that was due to oil spill workers and it waned as summer went on and was at much reduced rates."
Although the 13,000 hotel rooms in the three-county area are not completely sold out for every night of the long weekend, Hornsby said those without reservations will have to scramble to find accommodations.
"Is it better than last Memorial Day -- definitely," she said. "We're even starting to hear the phone ring about charter boats. It's still not to where it should be, but that indicates the perception is shifting from what it was last summer."
I'm not really into the ticky-tacky tourist thing, but these folks need to make their living - some in businesses that span generations. I will call this good news, but reserve judgement on just how good until I see what charter fishing trips into the deep Gulf are bringing - or not bringing - back, and if anyone's kids develop strange maladies after swimming...
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TNK-BP lays feud aside as it lines up billion-dollar oil and gas deals.
TNK-BP is back on the acquisition trail after months of internal feuding between its British and Russian oligarch owners stifled the oil and gas group.
The joint venture is now the overwhelming favourite for the Polish government's 51 per cent stake in Lotos, a $4.5bn-valued company that includes arguably Europe's most modern oil refinery. TNK-BP is also believed to be mulling a bid for ConocoPhillips' Vietnamese assets, which the US giant is selling as part of a $17bn divestment programme.
Such developments suggest a thawing in the relationship of BP and Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR), the vehicle's two owners. BP's chief executive Bob Dudley angered AAR in January when he announced a £10bn share swap and Arctic exploration deal with rival Russian group Rosneft.
TNK-BP was one of a handful of Russian majors, including Rosneft, that expressed an interest in Lotos. However, it was always thought that the Kremlin would only allow one of them to pitch for the group and it appears to have plumped for TNK-BP.
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Putin: Shell could work with Rosneft in Arctic.
Russia’s state-controlled oil company Rosneft could team up and swap shares with Royal Dutch Shell in an Arctic offshore deal similar to one that fell through with BP Plc this month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday.
Putin was overseeing a $16 billion share swap that would have seen BP and Rosneft jointly develop Russia’s sector of the Arctic shelf. The agreement fell through on May 16 after Russian shareholders of BP’s separate Russian venture, TNK-BP, contested it in court.
A Rosneft official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told The Associated Press at the time that the Moscow-based firm was now talking to other oil majors to replace BP in the Arctic deal.
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Alaskan showdown: Houston firm trying to get drilling rig into Alaskan waters, and Robert Duvall thinks that is just fine...
A Houston-based exploration firm’s efforts to drill for natural gas in Alaska’s Cook Inlet is drawing the ire of shipping groups that believe it is violating the Jones Act.
Escopeta Oil & Gas has been trying to bring a rig to the waters off Alaska’s southern coast for several years to drill in a number of leases it owns or co-owns with other operators.
The effort has been held up over the years by a variety of disputes with state officials, but in 2006 Escopeta secured an exemption from the Jones Act – which prohibits foreign flagged vessels from delivering goods to U.S. waters – to use a foreign-built heavy-lift vessel to move a jack-up rig.
That deal fell through, but Escopeta has continued to seek out other vessels to bring a rig to the Cook Inlet.
Last year, the State of Alaska held Escopeta in default for not starting drilling in a timely manner and increased the deposit fee the company must have on file to hold its leases by $4 million.
The state gave the company until March 30 this year to get the rig to Cook Inlet and until Oct. 31 to begin drilling or face more deposit fees.
Escopeta's president, Danny Davis, said that the waiver of the Jones Act was still valid, and the ship would deliver the rig within a week, but a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the waiver was no longer in effect.
“DHS will consider requests for penalty mitigation in the event of Jones Act violation on a case by case basis depending on the evidence and facts presented in each instance,” said DHS spokeswoman Erlinda P. Byrd in an e-mail. “No violation has occurred to date.”
The issue has caught the attention of US shipping interests, who believe the Jones Act should be adhered to.
Actor Robert Duvall, a friend of Davis, weighed in on the controversy.
Alaska’s got plenty of oil and gas that we need down here,”Duvall told an Alaska-based trade publication. It’s preferable to importing energy from foreign sources, such as the Middle East, he said.
“About the best thing we could do is let Danny drill up there. That would be great.”
Okay. Add him to my list of assholes. Shame, too. He's a good actor, and can dance the tango like nobody's business...
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Oh, joy...BP, tornadoes, flooding...and now it's hurricane season.
Weathering the storm: Above-normal hurricane season predicted.
Though hurricane predictions vary depending on the source, four forecasts for the 2011 hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through November 30, agree that there will be an above normal number of hurricanes in the Atlantic this year.
According to an April 2011 report from Colorado State University, there will be 16 named storms, with nine hurricanes, of which five will be major (Category 3-5). However, AccuWeather.com meteorologist Paul Pastelok believes that there will be 15 named tropical storms this season, with eight hurricanes, three of which will be major. Likewise, Weather Service International predicts 15 named storms with eight hurricanes, but forecasts that four of the hurricanes will be major. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just released its prediction on May 19th. According to the NOAA, the US will see 12 to 18 named storms, with six to ten hurricanes, of which three to six will be major.
Comparatively, based on historical data, the average number of named storms per year is 9.6, with an average of 5.9 hurricanes, of which 2.3 are major.
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BP unit accused of mismanaging retirement plans by investing in own stock.
BP's North American unit was accused in a lawsuit by its employees of mismanaging their retirement savings plans by investing heavily in its own stock before last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
BP’s safety and compliance record before the April 2010 sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig made the company’s U.S. shares an “imprudent investment,” according to a consolidated master complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Houston. BP Corp. North America Inc., its directors and members of the savings plan committee breached their fiduciary duty by buying BP stock and “failing to divest the plans” of the shares, the employees said.
“A disaster of the proportion of Deepwater Horizon and the resulting losses were both predictable and likely,” the employees said. “Because of defendants’ failure to protect the participants’ retirement savings from being imprudently invested in an excessively risky BP stock fund, plaintiffs and the class have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in retirement benefits.”
BP workers last year filed multiple lawsuits on behalf of all U.S. employees participating in the company’s retirement savings plans. The suits, combined together in the Houston court, claim losses of more than $1 billion from the stock plunge after the rig explosion and subsequent spill.
Scott Dean, a BP spokesman, didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment yesterday.
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Oil lawsuit may be U.S. "revenge" for BP spill.
Billionaire shipping tycoon John Fredriksen said a U.S. lawsuit against his oil trading companies may be a bid to extract revenge for BP's oil spill last year by targeting former BP traders who now work for him.
Fredriksen, a self-made magnate whose nickname is "Big Wolf," said he was shocked by the lawsuits and insisted his oil trading firms did nothing illegal in 2008, a period when U.S. regulators allege they manipulated world oil markets to pocket $50 million in illicit profits.
Instead, Fredriksen said a civil suit brought by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission this week may be targeting crude traders James Dyer and Nicholas Wildgoose because they once worked for British oil giant BP Plc (BP.N), the company behind the worst oilspill in U.S. history last year.
"Maybe the problem is that these guys (the traders) worked for BP and they made a lot of money for BP before," Fredriksen, looking relaxed but perplexed by the media attention directed at him in the past two days, told Reuters in an interview.
"Maybe they (U.S. authorities) are trying to get some revenge," he added, referring to BP's deepwater spill in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico last year.
Do you hear my little tiny violin playing "my heart bleeds for you", Mr. Fredriksen, you self-aggrandizing, delusional, egotistical bastard?
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