http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/fl-bahamas-oil-drilling-cuba-waters-20111204,0,2907728.story
By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau
December 4, 2011

WASHINGTON – Just as South Florida braces for oil drilling set to begin next month off the shores of Cuba, a Bahamian company is pressing to dig exploratory wells as early as next year less than 200 miles from the state’s delicate coastline.
The Bahamian plans could eventually bring rigs as close as 40 miles from Port Everglades.

The prospect of energy exploration off both Cuba and the Bahamas has broadened concerns that widespread drilling will lead to a major oil spill that pollutes the East Coast, fouling beaches, damaging reefs and endangering wildlife.
“If an oil slick gets into the Gulf Stream, it would be carried north, not only along the coast of Florida but farther north into the Middle Atlantic states,” warned former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, co-chairman of a commission that investigated the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. “The main concern for the United States would be, in the event of an accident, what capability would the Bahamas have to contain the consequences?”

Seismic testing has convinced the Bahamas Petroleum Co. that more than a billion barrels worth of oil may be found below waters south of Andros Island, the likely site of a first exploratory well.

“Geologically, it’s very exciting,” said Paul Gucwa, chief operating officer of Bahamas Petroleum, which has contacted larger companies in search of a partner to conduct the drilling.

“We will begin our exploration as soon as the Bahamian government puts the necessary regulations in place,” Gucwa said. “They are moving forward to put those regulations in place. We are moving forward to be ready to drill next year.”

When asked about the environmental impact, Gucwa said, “This is very close to Cuba. It would not be any different to the environment than the wells that are being drilled [in Cuban waters].”

The Bahamas and Cuba agreed in October, after 13 years of negotiation, to define and “delimit” their maritime border. The agreement fosters cooperation on trade, shipping and environmental protection. It also clears the way for the two countries to form a joint venture to tap oil reserves along that border and divide the proceeds.

But the Bahamian government – mindful of the Gulf disaster and a recent spill off the coast of Brazil – has blocked offshore production while reviewing its energy regulations and mulling the environmental impact.

The government has granted licenses for potential oil production in Bahamian waters east of Port Everglades and farther south along its maritime border with Cuba. The temporary ban, however, has blocked test wells in those areas.

“They have put on the brakes but not turned off the engine,” said Jorge Piñón, a former oil executive and energy expert at Florida International University, who has consulted with leaders in Cuba, the Bahamas and the U.S. government. “After Deepwater Horizon, they want to make sure their regulations are updated before they lift the ban. I think the [parliamentary] elections in the Bahamas in May will set the direction on this.”

The Bahamas, much like Florida, is conflicted: It wants to protect its ecosystem and tourism but is tempted by the riches of oil production. The parliamentary-election results could sway decisions on when or whether to lift the ban.

Removing it would clear the way for contractors with experience in offshore drilling to explore for oil, much as Cuba has contracted with Repsol, a Spanish company, to begin drilling in waters north of Havana.

A giant, floating Chinese-made rig named Scarabeo 9 is slowly chugging across the ocean from Singapore toward Cuba to begin drilling next month about 22 miles north of Havana and 70 miles south of the Florida Keys. The U.S. Coast Guard is making contingency plans in case a spill produces an oil slick that rides the Gulf Stream toward Florida.

Drilling off Cuba and Mexico – plus the prospect of wells near the Bahamas and potentially elsewhere in the Caribbean – prompted Graham, Piñón and environmentalists to call for regional cooperation on safety measures and to pool resources to contain a possible spill.
U.S. officials would prefer to discuss such matters through multinational forums rather than directly with Cuba, and they may get their chance this week. The International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency that focuses on marine safety and pollution, is hosting a workshop Wednesday to Friday in the Bahamas on contingency plans for an oil-spill disaster. Delegations are expected from the United States, Cuba, Mexico and Jamaica, which also is considering oil exploration.

Drilling plans in the region have also prompted some in Congress to press for more offshore production in U.S. waters, including the Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf along Florida’s west coast.

“You know, someone’s going to do the drilling,” said U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation. “If we are not going to take advantage of the resources we have available to us, my concern is that all of a sudden they [Cuba and other countries] start to slant drill. And if there is a catastrophic event, they aren’t going to care what happens to our beaches or shores.”
“Repsol and Cuba and China and everyone else is going to continue to close the noose around our necks as far as energy independence is concerned,” West said. “Wouldn’t it be a shame if down the road we’re going to China or Cuba or someone else for energy resources that we allowed to be taken right from under our noses?”

wgibson@tribune.com or 202-824-8256

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/05/2532384/white-house-releases-report-on.html

Posted on Monday, 12.05.11

BY CAIN BURDEAU
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW ORLEANS — The Obama administration has released a report on how the Gulf Coast can be restored following the nation’s worst offshore oil spill after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana in April 2010.

The report from the White House’s Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Restoration Task Force comes out the same week Congress considers a bill designed to handle billions of dollars in Clean Water Act fines BP is expected to pay for the release of more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

The restoration plan is a recipe for fixing the Gulf Coast’s myriad of environmental problems – from land loss in the Mississippi River delta to the area of low-oxygen called the dead zone that besets the northern Gulf waters every summer.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, December 2, 2011

The Pew Charitable Trusts this weekend will launch a national advertising campaign highlighting the risks of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

The campaign, which will include 30-second television commercials and online ads, comes weeks before the Interior Department must complete its review of Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s plan to drill six wells off Alaska’s northwest coast.

Federal agencies are also reviewing Shell’s oil spill response plan, air permits and impacts on endangered and marine mammals.

The TV ads, which will run Sunday in the District of Columbia market during “Meet the Press,” “This Week,” “Face the Nation” and “State of the Union,” and later in the week during cable shows including “Morning Joe” and “The Daily Show,” are Pew’s first major network buy on the Arctic.

Online ads will run beginning next week on sites including Politico.com and on targeted Google search ads, the group said.

The video opens with a pan of ice-choked waters, then cuts to a still of the flaming Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. It asks whether the United States could respond to an Arctic spill given that it took three months to quell the BP PLC spill in the Gulf.

“How long would it take in sub-zero weather, amid shifting ice in the dark of winter with no Coast Guard present, no roads and no ports for a thousand miles?” a narrator asks. “President Obama, don’t risk a spill in U.S. Arctic waters.”

Eleanor Huffines, manager of Pew’s U.S. Arctic program, said the group is not categorically opposed to drilling, but that such activity must include a capable oil spill response plan, new scientific insights and protection of ecological areas.

The ads mark an escalation in the battle over whether to allow new drilling in the Arctic. The area is believed to contain 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of most promising new frontiers for domestic energy production.

Shell roughly a year ago launched a lobbying campaign of its own urging the public and the Obama administration to support its proposal to drill in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas, an area in which it has invested billions of dollars over the past several years (Greenwire, Nov. 8, 2010).

The company scrapped its plans early this year after a U.S. EPA appeals board ruled its air permits were insufficient (Greenwire, Feb. 3).

The company earlier this year announced an expanded drilling plan, which groups also appealed to the EPA board and challenged in a federal appeals court (E&ENews PM, Sept. 29).

Adrian Herrera, who directs Arctic Power, which lobbies for drilling, said Alaskans are “highly supportive” of drilling off the state’s coast.

“One always has to remember that an oil spill does absolutely no one any good,” he said this morning after viewing the ads. “No, you can never be 100 percent sure [that a spill will be prevented], but you can do your darnedest job to try to prevent it.”

Shell has promised it will use world-class technology to ensure a safe, environmentally responsible Arctic exploration program. “One that has the smallest possible footprint on the environment and no negative impact on North Slope or Northwest Arctic traditional subsistence hunting activities,” spokesman Curtis Smith said last month.

The Coast Guard has warned that if an oil spill were to occur, it could do very little to help.

________

http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2011/12/02/8

ARCTIC: Congress may have a cheap fix to U.S. icebreaker dilemma
Lauren Morello, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, December 2, 2011

Tripling the number of working U.S. polar icebreakers could cost as little $11 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The news could help resolve a ongoing impasse between the House, which passed a bill last month that would force the Coast Guard to decommission both of its aging heavy icebreakers in the next three years, and the Obama administration, which hasn’t laid out a plan to buy or lease new ships.

And it could help the Coast Guard handle the economic and geopolitical shifts in the Arctic, where climate change is melting ice and positioning the region as a new hotbed of oil and gas exploration, shipping traffic and military posturing.

Right now, both of the nation’s heavy-duty icebreakers are laid up at their home port in Seattle. ThePolar Sea is set to be decommissioned; the Polar Star is undergoing repairs to extend its life another seven to 10 years. A third icebreaker, the Healy, is seaworthy, but it was designed to conduct scientific research and cannot break through the thickest ice (ClimateWire, Nov. 7).

Building a new heavy icebreaker would cost $859 million, according to a Coast Guard analysis completed last month. But repairing the Polar Sea’s engine to extract another seven to 10 years of use would cost just $11 million, a GAO official told the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation yesterday.

That could put the Polar Sea back on the water in 10 to 18 months, joining the Healy and the Polar Star, whose $60 million rehabilitation is scheduled to finish in December 2012.
“I’m happy to hear about that,” said Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). “If all that takes is $11 million, that’s not even a spit drop. … This is new to me. That’s something that could be done.”
Lease or buy?
Young is among a group of House Republicans who have pushed the Coast Guard to lease, not buy, a new heavy icebreaker, arguing that’s a faster, cheaper route to beef up the U.S. fleet.

Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp said yesterday that he is “ambivalent” about whether leasing or buying a heavy icebreaker makes more sense.

“I’ve leased one of my two cars,” he said. “When the lease was over, I’d paid a lot of money, but I didn’t have a car. I don’t know how that’s applicable to ships, but right now one-half of my garage is empty.”

A former Coast Guard official told lawmakers that his experience suggests it’s more expensive to lease than to own.

“When I was a member of the commandant’s staff in the late ’80s in Washington, we were directed to pursue the same sort of lease-versus-buy analysis,” said retired Rear Adm. Jeffrey Garrett, whose 31-year career included stints as the commanding officer of both the Healy and the Polar Sea.

“After over a year of analysis, study and discussion with other agencies, what became clear was that there was no off-the-shelf asset readily available. And in the long run, when you crossed it all out, considering the value of the payments, leasing actually cost about 12 percent more.”

But coming up with even the $11 million Band-Aid described by GAO may be a struggle for the Coast Guard.

“We have a lot of acquisition projects going, and we’re having problems fitting within the limits of current appropriations right now,” Papp said — projects that don’t include additional spending on icebreakers.

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/oil-companies-powned-in-e_b_1123211.html

Kevin Grandia, Online Director, Greenpeace USA
Posted: 12/ 1/11 01:42 PM ET

In true “Yes Men” style, environment campaigners duped representatives of major oil companies into attending a meeting about the harsh realities of offshore oil drilling, instead of their intended meeting with Greenland officials to talk about opening up Northern seas to drilling.

Jon Brugwald, a Nordic Greenpeace campaigner, explains how the Copenhagen meeting was jammed:
When the oil industry people arrived to the site of the meeting, Greenpeace activists greeted them with a red carpet drenched in oil, hand-banners, and a huge floating banner that read”Protect the Arctic: No License to Drill.

We decided that we needed to be dead certain that we this time had the full attention of the oil companies. To ensure this, we arranged our own get-together just downstairs from the official meeting. We booked a meeting room and set it up in nicely with coffee and cake for the nice oil people. When they arrived at the venue, our friendly activists (not the ones with hand-banners and the floating banner), welcomed oil industry people and told them that the meeting was unfortunately moved to another floor due to the annoying Greenpeace activists.

All the oil company representatives — from Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Statoil and NunaOil — politely came along to our meeting instead of a meeting with the Greenland representatives.

What came next was a half-hour presentation by the well-dressed campaigners on the many dangers posed by drilling in the pristine waters off the shores of Greenland — like the catastrophe that would result from an accidental oil spill making the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster look like child’s play in comparison.

“After half an hour, they didn’t have a clue about what was going on, and even when the last slide came up, they were oblivious to what had happened,” said Burgwald.

Watch it:

All I can say is “POWNED!”

Follow Kevin Grandia on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kgrandia

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.stuarthsmith.com/breakthrough-in-the-macondo-mystery-bp-admits-to-new-activity-at-deepwater-horizon-site#comments

This makes a lot of sense but is another new awful thing to contend with. The perils of offshore oil continue…. DV

Finally, some answers. After months of trying to make the fresh oil surfacing at the Deepwater Horizon site a “nonissue,” BP has finally copped to what’s really happening at ground zero of last year’s massive oil spill – where just last week, flyover surveillance footage captured a small fleet of large “oil-related” vessels working the waters. It’s hard to hide those ships the size of football fields, even in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a bombshell revelation that’s going viral, BP has admitted to conducting a study to “track oil from seabed to surface” in the Macondo Prospect. Sounds to me like they’ve found a leak.

Not so fast. A leak would suggest BP is to blame (perish the thought), but a “natural seep” would imply an act of God, conveniently out of the hands of mere mortals. Here’s how Sabrina Canfield covered the BP disclosure for Courthouse News Service on Nov. 21:

In an emailed statement late Friday, a representative from BP verified that several vessels are in the vicinity of the Macondo well: “There are several vessels there participating in a study of natural oil seeps. This study has been ongoing for the past month or so. Data continues being collected and we provided an update on the natural oil seeps at the SETAC [Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry] conference in Boston this week. … The study is documenting the specific locations of these seeps and is seeking to track oil flow from seabed to surface,” BP wrote.

If there are seeps in the area, they are not natural. I can assure you of that. BP was required to conduct a seafloor survey prior to applying for a permit to drill. If these seeps were not discovered during the survey – which they apparently weren’t – they must be related to the disaster and the heavy-handed methods used to attempt to seal the well. Consider this from my Oct. 13, 2011, post:

As you may recall, back in late August, BP lowered an ROV down to inspect the Macondo wellhead. The video feed, viewed by federal officials in New Orleans, confirmed that the well itself isn’t leaking. Although I’d like to see that video released to the public (to assuage the cynics), for now I’ll take the feds at their word.

If the riser, the rig and the wellhead aren’t leaking oil, where is it all coming from? As I and others have suggested before, the oil may be seeping through cracks and fissures on the seafloor. Remember, BP was banging around down there with heavy machinery and massive pieces of equipment during its many unsuccessful attempts to stem the flow of oil. One of the containment domes BP lowered over top the gushing well last year was four stories high and weighed more than 70 tons. That’s a lot of weight and stress being applied.

Back in August, I called for a full survey of the seafloor surrounding the Macondo wellhead. And today I am renewing that call. It’s not enough to say the wellhead itself isn’t leaking. As noted above, my guess is the heavy stress BP applied to the seafloor created cracks and fissures around the wellhead, and they are the source of all this fresh oil we’re seeing at the site and coming ashore more than 100 miles away.

The truly devastating part of the “seafloor crack” scenario is that kind of leakage can’t be stopped. You can’t plug a crack or a fissure, all you can do is try to contain and recover the oil.

So although BP has confessed to conducting a study at the epicenter of last year’s 200-million-gallon spill, its disclosed focus is just another example of the oil giant’s inability to tell the whole truth.

Stay tuned, we’ll be bringing you updates as details emerge.