The US announced that BOEM will offer 78 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for March 2019. The sale will include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Lease Sale 252 will be the fourth offshore sale under the 2017-2022 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program.
More than 20 tankers loaded with 9.6 million barrels of Venezuelan oil were anchored off the US Gulf Coast as of 7 February. Some buyers had purchased the cargoes before US imposed the sanctions in late January, using the vessels as floating storage, while others weighed how to pay under the new rules.
Shell Offshore, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, will pay $2.2 million for violating the Clean Water Act after spilling 1,900 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in May 2016. Then a subsea pipeline cracked at the company’s Green Canyon oil field. The new fine comes to add to $3.9 million the company agreed to pay in July 2018, for natural resource damage charges due to the spill.
Output cuts in oil-rich Alberta and Saudi Arabia result to leaving heavy-crude refiners from the Gulf of Mexico to Asia in a challenging position. The Saudis are expected to mostly focus on paring output of heavy crude as they lead efforts to rebalance the global market, according to Bloomberg. Although curtailments in Canada have driven local prices at a record in almost a decade, others as Arab Heavy and Heavy Louisiana Sweet are also gaining a powerful position.
BP announced that it has discovered two new oilfields in the Gulf of Mexico and has found one billion barrels of oil at an existing field with the help of a new seismic technology. The company, years after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill, announced its plans on expanding its production at its Atlantis oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico.
As 2018 is running out SAFETY4SEA is picking the hottest smart issues per month at a glance; from significant challenges to worth mentioning developments that made 2018 an important year for the maritime industry especially when it comes to the smart shipping era.
A total of 15 crew members were evacuated from the 134-foot liftboat ‘Ram XVIII’, after the vessel started taking on water near Grand Isle, Louisiana, on Sunday. The US Coast Guard and good Samaritan vessels headed to the scene after watchstanders at USCG Sector New Orleans received a report at approximately 3:16 a.m. from the ‘Ram XVIII’ that it was taking on water approximately 23 nm west of Southwest Pass.
Dutch Heerema Marine Contractors (HMC) announced the development of an innovative way of lifting ‘to redefine the boundaries of lifting operations offshore’. The ‘QUAD lifting’ enables HMC to integrally install and/or remove oversized topsides or jackets, guaranteeing lower overall project costs.
Offshore oil and gas operators in the Gulf of Mexico are continuing normal operations after the Hurricane Michael. Namely, personnel have returned to all of the 687 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as to all of the previously-evacuated non-dynamically positioned rigs.
Energy companies stopped almost a fifth of Gulf of Mexico oil production and evacuated staff from 13 platforms ahead of Hurricane Michael. Offshore producers such as Anadarko Petroleum, BHP Billiton, BP and Chevron have all evacuated staff from their offshore platforms in the Gulf.
