http://www.redstate.com/vladimir/2011/09/10/good-news-oil-drilling-off-florida-begins-nov-1-bad-news-its-in-cuba/

To all you NIMBYs in Florida and elsewhere, you can rest well with the knowledge that the best of Cuban industrial technology will be brought to bear in overseeing this operation. Per Richard Charter

Posted by Steve Maley
Saturday, September 10th at 1:00PM EDT

While it’s been the subject of rumor, gossip and misinformation for the last several years, this time it’s real: drilling off the north shore of Cuba is scheduled to begin November 1. Six wells are planned to be drilled with this rig by the various international companies who own exploration rights off the north shore of the island.

ŠSpanish energy company Repsol and its partners are now bringing the Chinese-built [drilling rig] Scarabeo 9 to a site off Cuba’s northwest coast, where it aims to drill as soon as November at a depth of more than 5,500 feet, deeper than the blown-out well that spewed 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf last summer.

The [rig’s] journey to Cuba will take two months, and once it arrives it will be put into operation almost immediately, said the official, who asked not to be identified. It will be used first as an exploratory well for a consortium led by Spanish oil giant Repsol YPF, which drilled the only offshore well in Cuba in 2004 and said at the time it had found hydrocarbons. [Source.]

The current trade embargo requires the operation contain less than 10% U.S. content. Of the major components, only the blowout preventer (BOP) is an American product (Cameron International).

A high-level delegation of U.S. oil-spill experts traveled to Havana this week to meet with Cuban officials. It has urged the Obama administration to cooperate with the Castro government on a joint-response plan that could avert environmental catastrophe for both countries. Š

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a long-time Castro foe, criticized the delegation’s visit, saying it gave “credibility” to Cuba’s attempt to become “the oil tycoons of the Caribbean.” Other lawmakers have also urged retaliatory measures against Repsol.

Repsol, the operator of the first Cuban drilling venture, is a large Spanish oil company with operations in 29 countries, including a $10 billion investment in Iran. It is also a lessee in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Š Bromwich confirmed that federal officials have talked with Spain’s Repsol about its plans to drill off Cuba later this year but haven’t made a deal to ensure that work meets the same standards it would if it were in U.S. waters.

Repsol has said it plans to begin drilling a well as soon as this summer in Cuban waters. Other international oil companies have lined up drilling afterward, including Malaysia’s Petronas and India’s ONGC Videsh. Cuban officials have said five wells could be drilled in the country’s Gulf of Mexico territory. [Source.]

In U.S. waters, drilling is regulated by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management &etc. (BOEMRE), an agency of the Department of the Interior led by Director Michael Bromwich. U.S. Federal jurisdiction ends 45 miles from Florida’s shores. This drilling will take place 60 miles from Florida.

While Cuban oil officials will manage and regulate the operations, the engineers and crews doing the actually drilling will be composed of experienced international oil workers, said [Lee Hunt, representing the International Association of Drilling Contractors, part of the U.S. delegation]. An Italian firm, Saipem, will be operating the rig, and Repsol’s partners include Statoil, a Norwegian company that he and others praise as a world leader in safe deepwater drilling. [Source.]
“Cuban oil officials will manage and regulate the operationsŠ” Oh, joy.

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/09/tropical_storm_lee_surge_revea.html

Big surprise. DeeVon

Times-Picayune

Published: Friday, September 09, 2011, 7:00 AM
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune

Surge from Tropical Storm Lee uncovered numerous tar mats, dozens of tar balls and abandoned strings of oil snare pom-poms along a stretch of Fourchon Beach owned by the Wisner Donation Trust, according to the property’s manager. “The beach got hit hard by surge, as it always does,” said Cathy Norman, secretary-treasurer and land manager for the trust. “With all the sand removed, many things were uncovered, including these huge tar mat areas.

“In some locations, the mats fell apart and tar balls blew up the beach and into the back marsh,” Norman said. “The surge also uncovered oil snare and pieces of equipment that got buried during the BP oil spill response, including all these stakes that were used to hang the snare in the water to catch oil.”
Norman said a BP representative was inspecting the beach on Wednesday, even as she and her staff were assessing the oil and equipment.

“We have teams conducting post-storm assessments along coastal beaches to determine what may have developed on the beaches and barrier islands as a result of Tropical Storm Lee,” said BP spokesman Curtis Thomas. “As these teams report results of their assessments over the coming days, response teams will be mobilized as necessary to respond to these affected areas.”
“If anyone has concerns regarding oil or tar balls on the beaches they should call the Response Center at 800.424.8802,” he said in an e-mail.

BP contractors were scooping tar balls off Alabama Gulf Coast beaches on Wednesday after similar reports. The material will be tested to determine whether it is from the BP Macondo well that erupted in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Coast Guard officials, who operate a Unified Incident Command office with BP in New Orleans to respond to BP oil cleanup issues, said there were no reports to its National Response Center of oil on Louisiana shorelines since Lee cleared out of the area on Tuesday.

Coast Guard spokeswoman Elizabeth Bordelon said Marine Safety Office officials in Morgan City and Houma also had no reports of tar balls or oil along Louisiana’s coast.

Under the Wisner trust, which was donated in 1914 to the city of New Orleans under a 100-year agreement, the city receives 34.8 percent of the trust’s revenue, Charity Hospital and the state of Louisiana receive 12 percent, and the rest goes to Tulane University, the Salvation Army and heirs of Edward Wisner. The city’s revenue is distributed through its Wisner Fund as grants for health, beautification, education and capital projects.

Much of Port Fourchon, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port’s onshore operations, facilities owned by Chevron Oil and a number of other oil- and gas-production facilities all sit on Wisner land.

Norman also said Lee surge water retreating from interior wetlands cut new pathways through the beach. She blamed that on BP contractors’ failure to remove barriers erected last year along existing passes to keep oil-stained Gulf waters from reaching the wetlands.

“They had built a huge land bridge and three sheet metal dams to close breaches and prevent oily water from moving inland,” Norman said. “We asked when they installed them to remove them when they were no longer needed. When the storm came in, all of a sudden, we’ve got brand new breaches in areas where it never breached before.

“They’ve completely altered the hydrology along the beach,” she said.
At several spots where contractors did use heavy equipment to dig out tar mats last year, the unconsolidated sand used to fill the holes has washed out and been lost to the beach, Norman said.

Norman said the uncovering of the new tar mats and tar balls should come as no surprise. The trust has been complaining to BP and Coast Guard officials for months about oil remaining just beneath the surface of the beach sand and just offshore.

“We’ve been responding all along to the ongoing contamination we’ve insisted has been there,” she said. “We’ve done our own science on tar balls and residual oil we’ve found and turned it over to BP and the contractor down there that’s in charge of cleanup.”

But instead of increasing cleanup efforts, the work tapered off and became part of what BP and Coast Guard have labeled a program of monitoring and maintenance, she said.

“We have never been out of response mode. We’ve been out there without a pause, only slowed down a bit during nesting season this spring,” Norman said. “We have never stopped seeing oil and they have never cleaned it up.”

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3327.
_______
Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/09/07/Dont-talk-oil-with-Cuba-lawmaker-warns/UPI-36531315399515/

Published: Sept. 7, 2011 at 8:45 AM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) — Washington is sending the wrong message by having a delegation in Cuba review the country’s plans to drill offshore for oil and natural gas, a lawmaker said.

A delegation led by William Reilly, a top official at the National Oil Spill Commission, left Monday for Cuba to examine Havana’s oil plans.

Cuba is looking into cutting the amount of oil it imports from Venezuela through development of offshore reserves.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement, said sending a U.S. delegation to Cuba sends the wrong message.

“By meeting with Cuban regime officials about their plans to drill for oil, U.S. officials are giving credibility to the regime’s dangerous oil-drilling scheme,” she said.
Deep-water exploration is under scrutiny following last year’s disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Spanish energy company Repsol leads an international consortium to drill off the Cuban shore this year. The Wall Street Journal notes that if the company finds oil in Cuba’s deep waters, it could spark a race to tap into those reserves.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that, as of 2009, Cuba had less than 1 billion barrels of oil reserves.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576546693429617386.html

Feds have been laying the groundwork for this for the past year. DV

September 2, 2011

By TENNILLE TRACY
U.S. oil-spill commission co-chief William K. Reilly is heading to Cuba next week to help evaluate that nation’s plans for developing its oil resources, trip organizers say.
Lawmakers have raised concerns about potential oil spills as Cuba begins offshore drilling, and oil-industry experts have pressed the Obama administration to grant exemptions to the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba in order to respond to spills.

The trip, which will involve a delegation of U.S. oil-drilling experts and environmentalists, coincides with Cuba’s effort to develop its offshore-oil resources as a way to wean itself off imports from Venezuela. U.S. officials believe Cuba’s waters could contain more than five billion barrels of undiscovered oil.

Cuba’s efforts to tap its offshore oil will get off the ground later this year, when a consortium led by Spanish company Repsol YPF S.A. is expected to begin drilling a well in more than 5,500 feet of water off the nation’s northern coast. If Repsol finds oil, it could touch off a quick-moving race to set up production in Cuban waters.

The delegation to Cuba, involving the International Association of Drilling Contractors and the Environmental Defense Fund, is on a fact-finding mission to determine the country’s long-term plans for pursuing its oil resources and identify steps to ensure safety and environmental protection. They’re scheduled to depart Monday.

The process of oil-drilling in thousands of feet of water is “inherently risky,” said Daniel Whittle, Cuba program director at the Environmental Defense Fund and a member of the delegation. “We believe it’s imperative that if and when Cuba drills, they get it right.”

Mr. Reilly, as co-head of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, helped to draft a report earlier this year that recommended U.S. officials work with Cuba and Mexico to develop shared standards for drilling in the Gulf. The oil-spill commission ceased operations in March after completing its work.

Cuba’s effort to promote drilling in its waters is presenting a thorny situation for U.S. lawmakers, regulators and companies.

Among the loudest critics of Cuba’s plans are Gulf Coast lawmakers who are raising questions about Cuba’s ability to respond to oil spills and the risks of crude oil washing on U.S. shores. Rep. Vern Buchanan, a Florida Republican whose district faces the Gulf of Mexico, introduced a bill earlier this year to allow the Interior secretary to deny U.S. oil exploration and development leases to companies that do business with Cuba.

“The U.S. is not going to see a drop of that oil,” said Max Goodman, a spokesman for Rep. Buchanan. “And we have learned from Deepwater Horizon that an oil spill can devastate a regional economy and pose long-term damage to our natural resources.”

Repsol will be drilling in waters that are deeper than those in which the Deepwater Horizon rig operated at the time it exploded last year. Repsol will be using a Chinese-built drilling rig that only recently left Singapore for Cuban waters. The rig is expected to arrive in November or December.

The rig, known as Scarabeo 9, was built to conform with the U.S. embargo, and Repsol has said it would be following U.S. safety standards, Repsol representative Kristian Rix said.

“We are confident that we have the right personnel and materials to drill safely and successfully in the area,” Ms. Rix said.

If oil is discovered, Cuba has a chance of becoming less dependent on Venezuela for its energy needs. In 2009, the country produced roughly 50,000 barrels of oil a day from onshore and coastal wells, relying on imports to supply an additional 130,000 barrels to meet consumption levels, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Given the risks of an oil spill, oil and natural-gas experts are urging the Obama administration to grant exemptions under the embargo to allow U.S. companies and experts to respond to a disaster. U.S. companies, such as Helix Energy Solutions, have been particularly aggressive in developing oil-spill containment systems in the wake of the BP PLC spill.

Allowing U.S. companies and experts to respond to a Cuban spill would be in the U.S.’s best interest, given the proximity of the drilling to U.S. shores, said Jorge Pinon, former president of Amoco Oil Latin America and visiting research fellow at Florida International University.

“There is an experienced company doing the work [in Cuba],” Mr. Pinon said. “What we’re lacking is, in the case of an emergency, Repsol and the other operators will not be able to access the resources” in the U.S.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Looks like we need to keep up the pressure on the agencies until we find out what the source of this oil may be….R

http://www.examiner.com/environmental-news-in-tallahassee/new-leak-near-deepwater-horizon-site-quickly-becoming-a-massive-oil-slick

Judson Parker, Tallahassee Environmental News Examiner
August 31, 2011

Over the past two weeks, I have been closely following reports of renewed leaking in the Macondo oil field, the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster (Map). First, New Orleans Lawyer Stuart Smith reported that nearly 40 ships were hired by BP to conduct a boom-laying mission over the August 13th weekend. Next, nonprofit organizations On Wings of Care and Gulf Restoration Network conducted a joint flyover of the spill site, bringing back photographic evidence of fresh oil near the site of the Macondo well. This in turn prompted reporters from the Mobile Press-Register to hire a boat out to the site, where they found massive “globules” of oil rising to the surface, creating a growing sheen on the water (you can read about that here).

Today, pilot Bonny Schumaker of On Wings of Care once again took to the air over the Gulf of Mexico, finding evidence of what appears to be a massive leak near the site of last year’s oil drilling disaster.

According to Schumaker, the oil “stretched for miles” with one continuous sheen stretching for nearly 10 miles. This contradicts BPs official story, which is that “none of this is true.”

It’s interesting then that Schumaker reports radio communication with a ship known as the Sarah Bordelon earlier this afternoon, who claimed they were gathering oil samples for BP (Marinetraffic.com confirms the location of the Sarah Bordelon within the vicinity of the Macondo).

“How can BP say it’s not there when they have a ship out there sampling it?” asked Shumaker.

Schumaker also reports calling the slick in to the National Response Center, though the U.S. Coast Guard has declined to comment for the time being.

The kind of surface sheen photographed in today’s flyover has not been seen since the height of last year’s oil spill, when nearly 210 million gallons of crude gushed into the Gulf of Mexico before the well was capped. Communities along the Gulf coast have still not fully recovered from the extensive damage to their coastal environment, which has also caused major losses in the fishing and tourism industries.

So just what is going on near BP’s damaged well?

According to BP spokesman Justin Saia, “neither BP nor the Coast Guard has seen any scientific evidence that oil is leaking from the Macondo well, which was permanently sealed almost a year ago.”

Perhaps Schumaker’s new photographic and video evidence will prompt a “scientific” inquiry into the source of the quickly growing oil slick located very near the former Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico.

Special thanks to Richard Charter