The non-essential personnel, who were evacuated from the Gulf of Mexico platforms ahead the Tropical Storm Barry, are now returning to their platforms as flights and normal crew-change activities are resuming, Shell informed.
As the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement informs, offshore oil and gas operators in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated platforms and rigs in response to Tropical Storm Barry. Specifically, personnel have been evacuated from 283 production platforms, 42.3% of the 669 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
A Shell employee and a contractor with oilfield services provider Danos Inc, were killed during a routine test of a lifeboat launch and retrieval capabilities at Auger Tension Leg Platform in the deepwater US Gulf of Mexico on Sunday morning.
The US Coast Guard issued its reporting requirements for the upcoming hurricane season at the Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf, requesting that operators of all manned facilities and MODUs report only when personnel were stranded onboard AND not able to evacuate due to extreme circumstances.
US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) Gulf of Mexico Regional Director Lars Herbst has established two panels to investigate two serious incidents that took place in the Gulf of Mexico last week. Investigation panels will issue reports with their findings regarding the causes and make suggestions on how to improve current safety measures after the investigations are completed.
Medium-sour crudes from the US Gulf of Mexico are being snapped up by overseas buyers, paving way for a record six supertankers to load at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) in a matter of weeks, Reuters reported citing people familiar with the matter.
Royal Dutch Shell, through its subsidiary Shell Offshore Inc announced that production has began at the Shell-operated Appomattox floating production system months ahead of schedule, opening ‘a new frontier in the deep-water US Gulf of Mexico’. Appomattox is the first commercial discovery that is brought into production in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico Norphlet formation.
TAFB, the National Hurricane Centre’s Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch, published a detailed five-day marine weather forecasts concerning the offshore waters of Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Ecuador. The new areas reflect an unprecedented increase in predicted lead-time and detail. Such improvements should promote better decision making by ship captains and crew in hurricane-prone waters.
The US Coast Guard informed that it is monitoring a natural gas and condensate leak from an orphan well, located four nautical miles southeast of Bob Hall Pier near Corpus Christi, Texas, on Thursday, May 9. The US Coast Guard is cooperating with the Railroad Commission of Texas, Texas General Land Office and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to monitor and secure the release.
Robert Day, VesselsValue Head of Offshore, discusses and presents the first edition of Offshore Layups infographics. As presented, out of all the major offshore oil and gas regions, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico has the largest number of laid-up OSVs.
