Link: S. Baldwin v K. Costner lawsuit over oil centrifuge flim-flam. #rsrh
It’s not as though hydrocyclones are new separation technology for oil & water. The price Stephen Baldwin got for his shares is still probably represents $1 million per gallon of oil recovered.
BP could not have expected Costner’s separators to work. $52 million represents the price to get him to shut up and to get the media off their back.
Link: Oil futures above $90, highest since ’08, as stockpiles fall. #rsrh
In other, completely unrelated news, GoM oil production is down by 355,000 barrels per day in the last six months.
Rig Maintenance Supervisor Bill Masters of Trout, LA lost his job with Seahawk, a shallow water rig contractor, last June 23. After 38 years on the rigs, Masters hoped to go back to work fairly quickly; that’s the way it had always happened before.
But not this time.
Seahawk has laid off 300 workers. Only three of 20 rigs in its fleet are currently working. (One of them is expected to be working for my company within a few weeks.)
Bill Masters is one of thousands who may never work the rigs again.
From the Financial Times:
Ken Salazar, interior secretary, said at the time that the administration wanted to proceed cautiously and focus on creating a more stringent regulatory regime.
The approach is already being felt. Regulators have issued only 19 permits to drill new wells in the shallow waters and one in the deep water since BP’s April 20 disaster. Before the accident, 69 exploration and development plans were pending approval, and 10-15 permits a month were being issued.
A quarter of the 44 shallow water rigs in the gulf are idle awaiting permits, says Jim Noe, executive director of the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. There were 86 rigs in the gulf before the spill, but 14 have left since. Of the 72 remaining, 44 are in shallow water and 28 left in deep water.
Forty thousand jobs are at risk in the shallow water alone, he said. That 90 per cent of the wells in the shallow water are for natural gas means there is no risk of an oil spill, he says, yet the authorities are not looking at the science.
“We’re on life support as an industry,’’ Mr Noe said.
[Emphasis added.]
Rigs are part of the critical infrastructure of the Gulf. They are the mobile machines that not only drill new wells but work on old ones. Without rig activity, production falls off rapidly.
There are several different classes of rigs, each with a specific application, water depth range, etc. They are not interchangeable. With the dwindling rig fleet, other aging infrastructure and increasingly hostile Federal regulatory presence, the Gulf of Mexico will not be sustainable as a producing province.
No doubt Mssrs. Obama, Salazar and Bromwich and Ms. Browner are well aware of that fact.
Cross-posted at RedState.com.
Link: #rsrh Ahnold makes a pitch for Energy Czar, mit de fracking and de drilling and what-have-you.
For the last two years, we’ve been subjected to the vagaries of Obama’s climate/energy czar Carol Browner, whose well-documented put-up of a job-murdering and counterproductive offshore drilling moratorium this year has crushed Louisiana’s economy and led to a precipitous decline in domestic oil production.
The word is that Browner is about to ascend to a post as the White House Chief of Staff sometime early next year, where her well-known socialist tendencies and ties to George Soros will make for regulatory hell and widespread corruption in Washington – with Louisiana’s productive economy remaining in the crosshairs.
Browner’s ascension will open up a job in the Obama administration – and an opportunity for the president to “reach across the aisle” and form a “bipartisan consensus” on energy and climate issues. Lo and behold, there’s a ready-made and available candidate to fit the bill.
Enter failed California governor and nominal Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Hollywood action hero told the Los Angeles Times editorial board that he’d love a chance to work in the Obama administration. What’s more, he touted himself for Browner’s job.
Link: Another victory for the Turducken Safety Admin. #rsrh
Suspect package holds up airport
As airport security becomes more of a concern during the holiday travel season, travelers will be seeing delays of all sorts. But an hour-long delay for Lafayette Regional Airport users Tuesday morning was of a nature most fowl.
The airport was briefly shut down as authorities investigated a suspicious package that turned out to contain a frozen chicken and a head lamp, said Lt. Craig Stansbury, spokesman for the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Qaddafi #rejectedreindeernames
You’re peeing down my leg & telling me it’s Global Warming. #rsrh http://amplify.com/u/j03y
Link: You’re peeing down my leg & telling me it’s Global Warming. #rsrh
This article actually does attribute Britain’s record snowfalls to “Climate Change”.
Link: BP spill update: Of 17,000 USCG samples, few show oil above background level. #rsrh
Coast Guard: Little seafloor oil from Gulf spill
NEW ORLEANS — Federal scientists said Friday extensive sampling of the Gulf of Mexico seafloor found oil in quantities too small to collect and in concentrations below harmful levels, except in the area surrounding the BP well.
The Coast Guard’s report contrasts independent scientists who say oil from the BP spill extensively damaged the seafloor and killed coral, sea fans and many bottom-dwelling animals like tubeworms.
“We are not finding any recoverable amounts of oil” on the seafloor, Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said. “We are dealing with barely detectable amounts of oil in the parts per billion in many places.”
He said the tiny amounts of oil fall well under pollution limits, except for the area within 1 1/2 miles of the BP well, where oil is bound with drilling mud pumped into the BP well to cap it.
The Coast Guard report was a summary of 17,000 water and sediment samples taken between May and October. The report said no further cleanup offshore was warranted and efforts should focus on tar and oil residue buried in the sand along the shore.
Oil in sediment samples could not be traced back to the BP well except for those taken near the well, the report said. In many places, the traces of oil could have come from other sources, such as natural oil seeps and even other oil leaks.
Since Aug. 3, the report said less than 1 percent of water and sediment samples exceeded levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers harmful to aquatic life.
Weak Dem field for 2011 LA Governor’s race. #rsrh http://amplify.com/u/iuaz
Maley's Energy Blog 