Sep 28, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/28/unexploded-ordinance-gulf-of-mexico_n_1923540.html

Reuters | Posted: 09/28/2012 1:35 pm EDT

* Research needed to locate, assess bomb risk

* Gulf of Mexico permit activity up after deadly Macondo blowout

By Eileen O’Grady

HOUSTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Millions of pounds of unexploded bombs dumped in the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. government after World War Two pose a significant risk to offshore drilling, according to Texas oceanographers.

It is no secret that the United States, along with other governments, dumped munitions and chemical weapons in oceans from 1946 until the practice was banned in the 1970s by U.S. law and international treaty, said William Bryant, a Texas A&M University professor of oceanography.

As technological advances allow oil companies to push deeper into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, these forgotten hazards pose a threat as the industry picks up the pace of drilling after BP Plc’s deadly Macondo well blowout in 2010 that lead to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Unexploded ordnance has been found in the offshore zone known as Mississippi Canyon where the Macondo well was drilled.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will auction 38 million acres of oil and gas leases in the central gulf in March.

The U.S. government designated disposal areas for unexploded ordnance, known as UXO, off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly 70 years after the areas were created, no one knows exactly how much was dumped, or where the weapons are, or whether they present a danger to humans or marine life.

“These bombs are a threat today and no one knows how to deal with the situation,” said Bryant. “If chemical agents are leaking from some of them, that’s a real problem. If many of them are still capable of exploding, that’s another big problem.”

Disposal zones were designated from Florida to Texas, said Bryant, who will discuss his research findings at the International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions conference that begins Monday in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

While the practice of dumping bombs and chemical weapons, including mustard and nerve gas, in the ocean ended 40 years ago some effects are just beginning to be seen, said Terrance Long, founder of the underwater munitions conference.

“You can find munitions in basically every ocean around the world, every major sea, lake and river,” Long said. “They are a threat to human health and the environment.”

The oil industry is no stranger to leftovers from the World War Two.

Last year, BP shut its key Forties crude pipeline in the North Sea for five days while it removed a 13-foot (4-metre) un exploded German mine found resting cozily next to the pipeline that transports up to 40 percent of the UK’s oil production.

BP discovered the mine during a routine pipeline inspection, then spent several months devising a plan to lift the bomb and move it far enough from the pipeline to safely detonate it.

In the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for 23 percent of U.S. oil production and 7 percent of domestic natural gas output, the hazards are known, but generally ignored.

In 2001, BP and Shell found the wreckage of the U-166, a German World War II submarine, 45 miles (72 kms) from the mouth of the Mississippi River during an underwater survey for a pipeline needed to transport natural gas to shore.

Bryant said he and colleague Neil Slowey have documented discarded bombs and leaking barrels over the past 20 years while conducting research for energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico.

Records of where these munitions were dumped are incomplete and experts believe many dangerous cargoes were “short-dumped,” or discarded outside designated zones.

Bryant said he has come across 500-pound (227-kgs) bombs about 60 miles off the Texas coast and other ordnance 100 miles offshore, outside designated zones. A t least one Gulf pipeline was laid across a chemical weapon dump site south of the mouth of the Mississippi River, he said.

While the risk of an underwater bomb exploding may be small, environmental damage from chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, is worrisome and needs to be researched, Bryant said.

“We would like to do a survey to be able to say if (this material) is harmful or not,” he said. “The condition of these barrels is deteriorating, so does it affect anything or not? We ought to know.”

Calls and emails to various companies with wells or pipelines in the gulf seeking comment were not returned. Neither the U.S. Army, nor the BOEM would comment as well.

Sonar data from a routine seabed survey performed by C&C Technologies identified munitions in about 3,000 feet of water near a proposed project, according to a paper presented at the 2007 Offshore Technology Conference.

After determining the bombs presented a low-to-moderate risk, the project continued as planned.

The oil and gas industry needs to do more address the problem, Long said. “It makes more sense to start dealing with the munitions from a risk-mitigation standpoint to be able to conduct operations in those areas rather than trying to avoid that they are there,” Long said.

The BOEM, which regulates offshore drilling in federal waters, warns companies seeking leases to drill or add pipelines about the existence of unexploded ordnance and requires underwater surveys to assess and manage the numerous natural and manmade hazards.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/62432742-08f0-11e2-b37e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27izXSakk

Financial Times

September 28, 2012 12:13 am
Brazil forces Transocean to halt drilling

By Samantha Pearson in São Paulo
Transocean, the world’s largest offshore oil driller, has been served with a preliminary injunction in Brazil, forcing the company to stop operations in the country within 30 days over an oil spill last year.

A federal court in Rio de Janeiro served the company with the ban on Thursday, which Transocean said it is “vigorously” trying to overturn.

Last November, about 3,700 barrels of oil flooded into the Atlantic Ocean off Rio de Janeiro from an offshore oilfield operated by US oil company Chevron and which Transocean had been contracted to drill.

The spill, which occurred when workers encountered unexpected pressure when digging a well, was followed by another small leak in March that is still being investigated.

Although November’s oil spill was relatively small – less than 0.1 per cent of the size of BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster – it has sparked a huge backlash as Brazil’s authorities jostle for power over vast, new-found oil reserves.

Last month, federal prosecutors warned they would suspend the operations of Chevron and Transocean, which has 10 rigs contracted for work in Brazil and derives about 11 per cent of its consolidated operating revenues from the country.

Although Transocean has appealed against the decision, a Brazilian court denied its request this month. Transocean has vowed to continue to appeal, adding that there has been no evidence of damage to marine life or human health as a result of November’s spill. Chevron is also appealing.

They also face criminal and civil lawsuits in relation to the spill totalling R$40bn ($19.7bn). Meanwhile, ANP, Brazil’s oil and gas regulator, has taken a much more moderate approach, fining Chevron only R$35.1m, which it has paid.

“The oil spill has had a huge repercussion nationally, perhaps because [the authorities] want to make an example of them to stop other foreign companies doing the same thing,” Lucas Dantas Evaristo de Souza, an environmental lawyer at Buzaglo Dantas Advogados, said.

Transocean said Thursday: “The company is vigorously pursuing the overturn or suspension of the preliminary injunction, including through an appeal to the Superior Court of Justice.”

__________________________________

http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012/09/27/brazil-court-serves-transocean-with-injunction-to-halt-operations/

Fox Business

Brazil Court Serves Transocean with Injunction to Halt Operations

Published September 27, 2012
Dow Jones Newswires

A Brazilian federal court served drilling company Transocean Ltd. (RIG) with an injunction Thursday that will force the company to halt operations in the South American country within 30 days.

Transocean said that it was “vigorously pursuing the overturn or suspension of the preliminary injunction, including through an appeal to the Superior Court of Justice.” Should Transocean fail to get the injunction overturned or suspended, it will be forced to comply with the order, the company said.

The injunction was handed down in late July, when a court ordered Transocean and U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. (CVX) to stop operating in Brazil because of the two companies roles in an offshore oil spill last November. Both companies deny any wrongdoing. Chevron and Transocean both face civil and criminal lawsuits related to the spill, which caused an estimated 3,700 barrels of crude oil to seep from cracks in the seabed after a drilling accident.

While Chevron was sanctioned by Brazilian oil regulators, Transocean was cleared by the country’s National Petroleum Agency, or ANP.

The ANP has also appealed the case, citing the economic impact the suspension would have on oil companies operating in Brazil as well as its role as the industry’s lead regulator. Transocean said that it has 10 rigs under contract for Brazil, with nine currently in the country.

Chevron halted operations at the Frade offshore field that was the site of the spill in March. Chevron did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Write to Jeff Fick at jeff.fick@dowjones.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Six Senate Democrats today urged the Obama administration to forgo oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Ocean until more is understood about its impacts on the environment, the economy and Native Alaskans.

Led by Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), the lawmakers said it was “perplexing” that the Interior Department had decided to include up to three sales off the Alaska coast in its new five-year plan given the lack of infrastructure and the challenges of cleaning up a spill.

“The Arctic Ocean is characterized by hurricane-force storms, 20-foot swells, sea ice up to 25 feet thick, sub-zero temperatures and months- long darkness,” said the letter last week signed by Merkley; Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.); and Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.). “Moreover, the Arctic has extremely limited infrastructure (there are no roads or deep water ports and only a handful of small airports) and the nearest Coast Guard station is 1,000 miles away.”

The agency this summer finalized a leasing plan that would allow targeted sales in the Chukchi Sea in 2016 and in the Beaufort Sea in 2017.

But in contrast to Gulf of Mexico sales that include all of the federal planning areas, the size and location of the Arctic sales will be determined by factors including resource potential, subsistence use and environmental conditions, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Moreover, Salazar last November told a House committee he won’t hesitate to yank the leases if new infrastructure and scientific insight are not developed in time for their sale (Greenwire, Nov. 16, 2011).

That’s the course Senate Democrats called for in their letter, which cites a recent report from the members of President Obama’s oil spill commission that found additional infrastructure and Arctic research is needed to safely develop oil.

The senators said Interior should make future Arctic leases contingent on scientific research and monitoring, demonstration of effective spill response, and continued protection of sensitive areas including Hanna Shoal and Barrow Canyon.

But Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a backer of Arctic drilling, said the Obama administration has exercised an “abundance of caution” in allowing Arctic development.

“We support the Obama administration on this one,” he said, adding that Murkowski believes there should be annual lease sales in the region.

Arctic leasing has spawned controversy since the George W. Bush administration sold billions of dollars in federal blocks during its second term. Environmentalists oppose Arctic drilling, warning weather conditions there would make oil spill response nearly impossible.

And for the first time, an oil giant today publicly opposed drilling in the Arctic. Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of Total SA, said energy companies should not drill in the Arctic because the costs are simply too high (Greenwire, Sept. 26).

Royal Dutch Shell PLC this summer began drilling the first well in Arctic waters in more than two decades, though it was forced to postpone drilling into oil-bearing rocks until next summer.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/transcanada-turns-sadisti_b_1917264.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Posted: 09/26/2012 4:53 pm

This is awful. DV

Watching from a distance is hard. I’m on the move setting up our big roadshow assault on the fossil fuel industry, but the real action is in Texas, where a growing number of blockaders are trying to shut down work on the southern section of the Keystone Pipeline — and where TransCanada, according to the people at the Tar Sands Blockade, is turning more than a little sadistic.

Here’s the story from this morning, as it’s been emerging from a flurry of emails and tweets. (No video — police aren’t letting journalists or observers near the site). There are eight — no, now nine — people in makeshift tree houses in a grove of forest that TransCanada needs to obliterate to push their pipeline through. It’s on private land that was taken with threat of eminent domain, a tactic that the company has used repeatedly to bully landowners from Nebraska to Texas, but despite the protests of everyone from Sierra Clubbers to Tea Partiers, TransCanada is going ahead full bore with construction.

Until this morning when, in an effort to protect those tree-sitters, two other protesters locked themselves (one arm each) to the logging equipment. This slowed operations and it angered the police.

Here’s how organizers of the protest described what happened next:
A plain-clothes police officer was among the aggressive officers to implement torture tactics. He put [Benjamin] Franklin in a chokehold cutting off his breathing, and bent him over backwards in an attempt to make him pass out. Franklin reports difficulty swallowing because of bruises sustained to his esophagus.

The most physically aggressive was the ranking officer, a Lieutenant with the Wood County Sheriff Department under the observation of TransCanada employees. He twisted and contorted the tube that [Shannon] Bebe and Franklin had locked their arms into, cutting off circulation to their hands and cutting abrasions into their hands and forearms.

Franklin and Bebe then describe pepper spray as the most painful part of their ordeal. Police sprayed into their lockdown tube, and the chemicals burned their already-open wounds.

Fortunately they were able to make it through their mutual torture by intimating personal reassurances to each other. Franklin and Bebe say they were able to endure the pain knowing that they were in it together. Despite the immense pain our brave blockaders remained locked to the machinery for several hours – determined to stop this toxic tar sands pipeline.

After the pepper spray didn’t work the police again conferred with TransCanada employees before sending someone back to the police car to bring a taser. Franklin and Bebe were each tased for one second. Then Franklin was tased for 5 entire seconds. He described the pain as immense and almost physically unbearable.

Afterwards, John, the senior TransCanada supervisor openly congratulated the aggressive Sheriffs Department Lieutenant on a “job well done.” To which the Lieutenant replied: “if this happens again we’ll just skip to using pepper spray and tasing in the first 10 minutes.”

This is obviously a lot harder than what any of us underwent in the civil disobedience outside the White House last fall that delayed the northern section of the pipeline a year. In fact, it’s hard to imagine — handcuffing someone and then tasering them? (And on a day when the University of California was forced to pay $1 million to the peaceful protesters they pepper-sprayed at UC Davis last year).

But given all the ways that Transcanada has bent the facts and warped our political system in their pursuit of tarsands profit, it maybe stands to reason they’re willing to twist arms too.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.thestar.com:80/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1261677–china-closing-in-on-huge-oilpatch-purchase

Published on Monday September 24, 2012

TODD KOROL/REUTERS Nexen president Kevin Reinhart votes during the special shareholders meeting that approved CNOOC’s offer to buy the Canadian oil and gas producer. (Sept. 20, 2012)

By Gillian Steward, Columnist

CALGARY-Will one of the tallest buildings in Calgary soon be emblazoned with the initials of a Chinese state-owned oil company?

That’s just one of the many questions that hangs over the proposed takeover of Nexen, a major oilsands player, by the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC).

In July CNOOC offered Nexen shareholders a 61-per-cent premium on the share price and last week those shareholders decided it was a deal that they simply couldn’t refuse. It was an important step toward completion of the $15-billion deal, China’s largest overseas acquisition to date.

After the shareholder vote, Nexen’s interim president, Kevin Reinhart, assured the media that CNOOC would be keeping all of Nexen’s 3,000 employees. It has also promised to make Calgary headquarters for all its operations in the Western Hemisphere.

But there are no guarantees that CNOOC will not move in its own executives and staff. It might even want to bring in Chinese workers for its oilsands project in northern Alberta.
This is a really big deal in more ways than one. And it is making a lot of people here uneasy, mainly because there are so many unanswered questions. Just last week, Alberta MP Ted Menzies said he is hearing lots of questions and complaints about the deal from constituents.

The Harper government has yet to approve the deal and so far the prime minister hasn’t said much about it publicly. But as the NDP has pointed out, we still don’t know how the government defines a net benefit to Canada in cases like this.

The energy sector is used to multi-million-dollar takeovers. And it is certainly accustomed to foreign ownership. U.S companies have maintained a strong hand in Alberta’s resource development ever since oil was first discovered here just over 100 years ago.

At one time or another Gulf, Texaco, Chevron and Mobil have all had imposing office towers in the heart of Calgary’s downtown core. BP and Shell have been active in the oilpatch for decades. More recently investors from India to Norway have bought into oilsands development in a big way.

According to a report prepared by Forest Ethics Advocacy , a B.C.-based conservation group, two-thirds of oilsands production in Canada is owned by foreign companies, an analysis based on shareholder information from more than a dozen companies involved in oilsands development.

Many in the Canadian business sector argue that money is money, that Canada needs foreign investment because we don’t have enough homegrown wealth to develop our resources without it, and as long as foreign investors play by our rules there won’t be a problem. Many oil companies are openly courting Chinese investors.

But the CNOOC takeover is in a different category than most foreign takeovers. China is not a democratic state and its marketplace is not the kind of free market we are used to.
CNOOC is owned and controlled by the Chinese government a.k.a. the Chinese Communist party. There is no distinction between the party and the state in China. There is no distinction between the party and the marketplace. The CPC rules, and can be ruthless when it comes to getting what it wants.

So what are we really getting when CNOOC buys up a major Canadian player in the energy sector? Since presumably it will always have the financial backing of the Chinese government, its activities won’t be curbed by the need to make a profit, as is the case with other players in the marketplace. It will have more than enough resources to tilt the playing field in its favour.

And while Nexen, or whatever CNOOC’s Canadian operation will eventually be called, might still be headquartered here, we all know where its marching orders will come from. How accessible will those party bosses be to government, business and media watchdogs in this country?

It is our oil after all; and our land, water and air that will be used to bring it to market.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford has already made it clear that she welcomes investment from China. And it’s hard to believe that Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn’t salivating at thought of all that Chinese money pouring into the oilsands.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of unanswered questions. And there’s a big black SUV with a CNOOC1 license plate driving around Calgary. I saw it at the airport a few weeks ago.
Looks like CNOOC plans on being here for quite a while.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary journalist and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

Special thanks to Richard Charter