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According to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg, coupled with MarineTraffic real-time tracking, at least 25 tankers carrying almost 17 million barrels of imported crude oil are drifting near Texas and Louisiana ports, unable to offload because of closures from Tropical Storm Harvey.

Source: MarineTraffic

A Bloomberg further details, 20 Aframaxes, 3 VLCCs, 2 Suezmaxes are currently waiting off Texas ports of Corpus Christi, Freeport, Texas City, Houston and Galveston, as well as off Sabine Pass and Lake Charles, Louisiana. This is three more than the 22 ships that were “drifting” on August 28.

Follows a description of the stuck tankers’ cargo:

6m bbl Mexican crude, including Maya
4m bbl Saudi oil
3.3m bbl Venezuela crude
2m bbl from Iraq
500k bbl Castilla from Colombia
500k bbl Ostra from Brazil
500k bbl Bonga from Nigeria

Additionally, here is a current status update of the various ports:

Corpus Christi:

Port shut since Aug. 24, sees return to normal operations by Sept. 4
Refineries planning restarts for this week:
- Flint Hills may restart as soon as Tuesday
- Valero, Citgo preparing for restart
Oil imports via Corpus Christi in 2016 were 225.8k b/d
- Top suppliers, according to EIA data compiled by Bloomberg:
- Venezuela 31%
- Saudi Arabia 18%
- Iraq 13%

Freeport:

Port shut
Phillips 66 Sweeny (247k b/d) shut
Oil imports via Freeport in 2016 were 128.6k b/d, of which 98% came from Venezuela and the rest from Saudi Arabia: EIA data

Houston:

Port of Houston still shut, no timeline for reopening
Shell Deer Park (316.6k b/d capacity) shut; LyondellBasell (263.8k b/d) cuts rates; Exxon Baytown complex (560.5k b/d), Exxon Beaumont (344.6k b/d), Marathon Galveston Bay (451k b/d) in process of shutting down
Oil imports via Houston, largest U.S. port for imported oil, 574.7k b/d in 2016, according to EIA; top suppliers:
- Mexico 51%
- Saudi Arabia 15%
- Colombia 13%

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gulf of Mexico DEAD ZONE caused by agricultural runoff from U.S. farms

August 22, 2017

Gulf of Mexico DEAD ZONE caused by agricultural runoff from U.S. farms

(Natural News) Every year, a hypoxic zone appears along the Gulf of Mexico. Otherwise known as a “dead zone,” it is an area of water that contains little to no oxygen. The significantly reduced levels essentially makes the body of water a biological desert. Hypoxic zones usually occur around summertime. But while these areas are considered to be a natural phenomenon, scientists fear that increased human activity may be contributing to the number of dead zones being observed worldwide. More disturbingly, human factors may also be causing the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico to grow. Scientists predict that for this year, the hypoxic zone in the area will cover 10,089 square miles. This is about the size of Vermont. Biologists declare that bold and new approaches need to be made now to prevent a biological crisis. They have expressed a desired target reduction of 59 percent in the amount of nitrogen runoffs in the area. This would shrink the hypoxic zone to the size of Delaware.

Approaches to achieve this end are identified in a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from the University of Michigan believe that this goal is achievable, though it would require the adjustment of large scale agricultural practices. The magnitude of the problem prompted an intergovernmental panel to extend the reduction program to 2035. This should give enough time, official spokespeople of the panel say, to achieve the goal of a hypoxic zone with a size of only 1,950 square miles.

What truly causes a hypoxic zone is yet to be fully determined, but scientists believe that the one in the Gulf of Mexico may be due to excessive farmland runoff containing fertilizer and livestock waste.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Deepwater Horizon and our emerging ‘normal’ catastrophes

October 16, 2016

Deepwater Horizon and our emerging ‘normal’ catastrophes

While watching the recently released film “Deepwater Horizon” about the catastrophic well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history, I remembered the term “fail-dangerous,” a term I first encountered in correspondence with a risk consultant for the oil and gas industry.

We’ve all heard the term “fail-safe” before. Fail-safe systems are designed to shut down benignly in case of failure. Fail-dangerous systems include airliners which don’t merely halt in place benignly when their engines fail, but crash on the ground in a ball of fire.

For fail-dangerous systems, we believe that failure is either unlikely or that the redundancy that we’ve build into the system will be sufficient to avert failure or at least minimize damage. Hence, the large amount of money spent on airline safety. This all seems very rational.

But in a highly complex technical society made up of highly complex subsystems such as the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig, we should not be so sanguine about our ability to judge risk. On the day the offshore rig blew up, executives from both oil giant BP and Transocean (which owned and operated the rig on behalf of BP) were aboard to celebrate seven years without a lost time incident, an exemplary record. They assumed that this record was the product of vigilance rather than luck.

And, contrary to what the film portrays, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was years in the making as BP and Transocean created a culture that normalized behaviors and decision-making which brought about not an unavoidable tragedy, but rather what is now termed a “normal accident”–a product of normal decisions by people who were following accepted procedures and routines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Overview of the Northern Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

September 10, 2016

Overview of the Northern Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

The post that follows is a guest post by southlageo, a geologist with over 30 years of oil industry experience.

SouthLageo/

In this post, I will address 3 topics relating to the Northern Deepwater Gulf of Mexico –
1. Historical oil production
2. One view of the future of exploration
3. EUR ranges

I will limit my comments to oil production (not gas production). All production data is from BSEE/BOEM. The play outlines on the map are my best estimates. I will be using the BSEE definition of deepwater which includes water depths greater than 1000’. And, I will be assuming a Business As Usual future – by that I mean that fossil fuels will continue to be an important an energy source, and the world will continue to be able to afford them.

1. Historical production

Cumulative production to date from the deepwater GOM is about 7 billion barrels of oil (Bbo). Total shelf production is about 13 Bbo. The chart below shows both shelf (in green) and deepwater production (in brown/red), in annual, increments, going back to 1985. As you can see, shelf production dominated throughout the 80s and 90s, and then in 2000 deepwater production exceeded shelf production, and it has been that way ever since.

(The totals above include production from before 1985)

SouthLageo/

The 3 peaks in deepwater production, in 2002-2004, 2009-2010, and the present peak from 2014, are the results of advances in technologies that have allowed industry to march into deeper water and produce from deeper reservoirs.

The earliest peak was, in a sense, an extension of shelf play types into deepwater. The reservoirs were Pleistocene to Miocene in age, mostly bright-spot associated, and outboard of salt, and ranged in depth from ~10,000-20,000’. The biggest fields in this trend were Shell’s Mars/Ursa complex in Mississippi Canyon, and their Auger field in Garden Banks. Peak production approached 1 million barrels of oil per day (mmbopd).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shell Oil Spill Cleanup Operation Ends As Voices Against New Gulf Drilling Grow Louder

May 19, 2016

Shell Oil Spill Cleanup Operation Ends As Voices Against New Gulf Drilling Grow Louder

Both entities stated that no environmental damage has been reported, but independent monitors from Greenpeace, Vanishing Earth and Wings Of Care question whether the size and potential impact of the spill are being downplayed.

News of Shell’s oil spill 90 miles south of Louisiana’s Timbalier Island came the day before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) hosted a final week of public meetings on the Gulf Coast to give the public a chance to comment on its Five Year Plan 2017-2022 oil leasing program. Its plan calls for lease sales of 47 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas companies for offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Shell contracted Clean Gulf Associates and Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) for the cleanup operation. MSRC, one of the companies BP used to clean up its 2010 spill, dumped the dispersant Corexit in the Gulf.

This time, “dispersant wasn’t used,” the Coast Guard told DeSmog. The Coast Guard and Shell agreed that using on-water recovery vessels and skimming would be the best oil recovery option.

Environmental scientist Wilma Subra, though pleased dispersant wasn’t used, told DeSmog, “Skimming is not a very good oil recovery option.”

Subra believes that if skimming is the best cleanup method the Coast Guard and oil companies can come up with, it shows they are no better prepared for an oil spill than they were when the BP oil disaster occurred.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Six Years After Deepwater Horizon: Time For Serious Action

April 20, 2016

Six Years After Deepwater Horizon: Time For Serious Action

BP oil disaster by Julie Dermansky

The cleanup crews abandoned the Gulf Coast years ago, claiming that the damage from the spill was “gone” and the media quit paying attention shortly after the wellhead was capped at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the lack of attention paid to the Gulf region in recent years, the lasting damage of the oil spill is something that remains fresh on the minds of everyone that calls this area home.

Like most disasters that don’t involve national security issues, Americans tend to operate under the belief that once the media attention has faded the issue is resolved. They don’t understand that the victims of the spill who lost their source of income are still fighting court battles against BP, Transocean, and Halliburton.

They haven’t heard about the sea life with abnormal growths and heart defects linked to the lingering oil and dispersants that have settled on the bottom of the Gulf. And they are unaware that tar mats and tar balls are still common sights on beaches throughout the region.

Here’s a quick primer on what the Gulf Coast has gone through in the last six years for those who haven’t been paying close attention:

First, we have the real extent of the damage caused by the oil. Photojournalist and DeSmogBlog contributor Julie Dermansky captured images throughout the oil spill and cleanup process, and here are a few that really show, in detail, how bad things were along the shore:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Extreme Weather, Widespread Flooding Hammer Louisiana as Federal Government Prepares to Lease Gulf of Mexico for Drilling

March 15, 2016

Extreme Weather, Widespread Flooding Hammer Louisiana as Federal Government Prepares to Lease Gulf of Mexico for Drilling

Walter Unglaub never thought flooding would threaten the carriage house he rents in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. It is on a bluff 30 feet above the Bogue Falaya River, in an area that is not considered a flood zone.

But that didn’t stop a flash flood from forcing Unglaub to swim for his life to get to higher ground awaiting rescue last Friday.

“No one is safe from extreme weather,” Unglaub told DeSmog on Sunday when he returned to sort through his belongings to see what, if anything, was salvageable.

After two days of intermittent rain, 14 inches of rain fell Friday night. This extreme weather event took place 12 days before the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will auction drilling leases to 43 million acres of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

VIDEO: Walter Unglaub returns home for the first time after the floodwaters drop

Initial records released by the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness say about 5,000 homes in Louisiana sustained flood damage following a deluge. The count is likely to grow as the damage assessment in Southeast Louisiana is not complete.

Rescue crews evacuate residents in the Tallow Creek subdivision to safety. © 2016 Julie Dermansky

From Tangipahoa, St Tammany and Washington Parishes, 1,500 residents were rescued by the time the Tchefuncte River and Bogue Falaya River peaked on Saturday morning. And more damage is likely Monday evening when the West Pearl River, further south, crests well above flood stage in the town of Pearl River.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As the Fracking Boom Spreads, One Watershed Draws the Line

October 20, 2015

As the Fracking Boom Spreads, One Watershed Draws the Line

After spreading across Pennsylvania, fracking for natural gas has run into government bans in the Delaware River watershed. The basins of the Delaware and nearby Susquehanna River offer a sharp contrast between what happens in places that allow fracking and those that do not.

Over the last several years, with the hydraulic fracturing technology in hand to extract natural gas from the tight formations of the Marcellus shale, the industry moved quickly and seemingly inexorably from West Virginia and across the prized geology of Pennsylvania. State maps that designate each well with a colored dot look as if a storm of confetti has blown up from Pennsylvania’s southwest, intensifying as it reaches the state’s rural and heavily forested northeast.

Gerry Dincher/Flickr

A wellhead in north-central Pennsylvania on a platform used for drilling natural gas.

In 2008, the state produced only two percent of the country’s natural gas and the Gulf of Mexico 26 percent. By 2013 the percentages were nearly reversed: Pennsylvania produced 23 percent to the Gulf’s five percent. Now some 8,000 wells in Pennsylvania produce roughly 17 billion cubic feet of gas per day, and the expectation is that within the next decade new infrastructure will double those numbers, as well as add 60,000 miles of pipeline.

Only one area of Pennsylvania’s Marcellus has escaped the fracking storm — the portion that lies within the watershed of the Delaware River, the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi. Four years ago the gas industry was poised to spread into the Delaware River basin, which encompasses 13,000 square miles of land in four states. The industry had signed thousands of leases with watershed landowners. And although many of those landowners’ neighbors looked west at the industry’s growth in the Susquehanna River basin and wanted no part of it, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) was ready to give the go-ahead.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Mexico Ready For Life Without Its Sugar Daddy?

July 17, 2015

Is Mexico Ready For Life Without Its Sugar Daddy?

The autopsy has already begun.

As the world’s attention is transfixed by every new development in Chapo Guzman’s latest audacious prison break, something much more important – and potentially more dangerous – is happening in Mexico. Yesterday the country held its first auction of offshore oil leases, bringing to an end 77 long years of state control over energy.

Until yesterday, Petróleos Mexicanos, A.K.A. Pemex, the state oil company, ran all oil and gas production in Mexico. But that has now changed. With it a new age has begun, one in which Mexico’s energy sector will finally get the funds it needs to extract the vast hydrocarbon resources it has at its disposal. It will also get the technology it needs for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as private companies, in particular from the US and the UK, provide essential know-how and best practices. In short, it is a perfect win-win for all concerned…

Or at least it was supposed to be, until the bottom fell out of the global oil markets. Now the stagnant market is overwhelmingly in the buyer’s favor and yesterday, as Bloomberg reports, the buyers weren’t interested in buying:

Mexico’s first auction of offshore oil leases fell short of the country’s expectations as several majors decided not to participate.

Only two of the 14 shallow-water blocks released on Wednesday received qualifying bids. Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total SA passed on the country’s sale of territory in the Gulf of Mexico, 77 years after the country nationalized crude. The 14 percent success rate was less than half the 30 percent to 50 percent goal that the government said would be its minimum for judging the event a success.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greenwash: Shell May Remove “Oil” From Name as it Moves to Tap Arctic, Gulf of Mexico

July 12, 2015

Greenwash: Shell May Remove “Oil” From Name as it Moves to Tap Arctic, Gulf of Mexico

Shell Oil has announced it may take a page out of the BP “Beyond Petroleum” greenwashing book, rebranding itself as something other than an oil company for its United States-based unit.

Marvin Odum, director of Shell Oil’s upstream subsidiary companies in the Americas, told Bloomberg the name Shell Oil “is a little old-fashioned, I’d say, and at one point we’ll probably do something about that” during a luncheon interview with Bloomberg News co-founder Matt Winkler (beginning at 8:22) at the recently-completed Shell-sponsored Toronto Global Forum.

“Oil,” said Odum, could at some point in the near future be removed from the name.

Odum’s comments come as Shell has moved aggressively to drill for offshore oil in the Arctic and deep offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, while also maintaining a heavy footprint in Alberta’s tar sands oil patch.

Image Credit: Bloomberg News Screenshot

Shell also recently acquired BG (British Gas) Group, a company that owns numerous assets in the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, transforming the company into what Forbes hailed as a “world LNG giant.”

Winkler quipped in Toronto that due to this major asset purchase, it might be more accurate to call Shell Oil, “Shell Gas.”

In October 2011, BG Group signed a major contract with the U.S.-based LNG giant Cheniere to ship its gas product obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to the global market. That LNG will begin to flow by the end of the year.

Just a week before Odum told Winkler that Shell may take “oil” out its company name, he appeared on Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the Aspen Ideas Festival to boast about his company’s big plans — plans to drill for oil in the deep offshore Gulf of Mexico Appomattox field. At Aspen, Odum called Appomattox a “world class oil and gas project.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

World Oil Output Last 3 Years

June 4, 2015

World Oil Output Last 3 Years

The EIA publishes every possible energy stat for the USA and hardly anything for the rest of the world. Well, anything current for the rest of the world anyway. TheirInternational Energy Statistics is already five full months behind and working on six. December 2014 is the last international oil production data we have.

Anyway during this lull in other data I decided to look at the last three years of international data, from December 2011 to December 2014. All data is in thousand barrels per day.

World C+C production was flat for most of 2012 and 2013 but in late 2013 production took off and has increased by about 3 million barrels per day above the average for 2012 and 2013. December C+C production was 79,300,000 BPD.

While total C+C production has increased by 3,000,000 BPD over the last three years the top ten gainers have increased just over twice as much, 6,200,000 BPD.

And just who were the big C+C production increasers for the last three years. Keep in mind this is the total change, or increase, over the last three years, not total production.

The largest gainer, by a wide margin, was the USA. Iraq and Canada were runners up and the rest were also rans.

Almost everyone else had declines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mexico’s Pemex Plagued By Deadly Offshore Explosions and Major Pipeline Spills

May 27, 2015

Mexico’s Pemex Plagued By Deadly Offshore Explosions and Major Pipeline Spills

It’s been a disastrous year for Pemex, the state-owned Mexican oil company at the center of the nation’s landmark energy reforms.

In just over a month, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) starred in three tragic incidents, two fatal.

First was a deadly explosion aboard a Pemex offshore oil processing platform, which killed at least four, injured 16, and—despite the company’s comments to the contrary—looks to have spilled a miles-long plume of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. A mere 15 days later, a spill from a Pemex pipeline in the state of Tabasco fouled three rivers and temporarily left half a million people without access to drinking water. Fast forward three weeks, and another accident on an offshore rig killed two workers.

These incidents, argues Gustavo Ampugnani, lead energy and climate campaigner for Greenpeace Mexico, foreshadow worsening oil- and gas-related disasters as the country’s massive energy reforms open Mexico’s vast fossil fuel reserves up to international companies that are even less regulated and scrutinized than State-owned Pemex.

Explosion in the Gulf

On April 1st, an explosion rocked the company’s Abkatun-A Permanente platform, engulfing the rig in flames. The massive fireball and subsequent blaze sent hundreds of Pemex contractors into the sea. Nearly two months later, we know that four workers were killed, at least 16 were injured, and three are still missing, now presumed dead. Survivors described a terrifying scene, as crew members “jumped into the sea out of desperation and panic.”

Roger Arias Sanchez, an employee of Pemex contractor Cotemar, told the Associated Press that, “there was nothing you could do but run.”

With the 5-year anniversary of the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf just behind us, Pemex and the Mexican government quickly clamped down communications about the disaster in the oil-rich Campeche Sound shallow water offshore region, offering optimistic, blue sky commentary about the severity of the incident, and the extent of any potential

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why U.S. East Coast Should Stay Off-Limits to Oil Drilling

March 1, 2015

Why U.S. East Coast Should Stay Off-Limits to Oil Drilling

It’s not just the potential for a catastrophic spill that makes President Obama’s proposal to open Atlantic Ocean waters to oil exploration such a bad idea. What’s worse is the cumulative impact on coastal ecosystems that an active oil industry would bring.

by carl safina

When it comes to the Obama administration’s recent move to open portions of the Atlantic coast to oil exploration, I’m a bit out of synch with environmentalists who are worried about the big spill. They warn of another Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez-type fiasco coming to the Southeast. But to me, it’s just about the day-to-day business of chasing oil, the wrong-headedness of it all.

It’s not that I don’t have some personal history with the major oil calamities of recent decades; I do. In my early teens the first televised images of oil-coated birds during the 1969 blowout off Santa Barbara shocked me and the nation, inspiring the first Earth Day and propelling a

burst of environmental laws. Twenty years later, at home working on a scientific paper, I heard the radio’s news of the Exxon Valdez’rupture and of thousands of oiled birds and otters, and began sobbing at my desk. A decade later, I visited Cordova, Alaska, and saw how the pain and disruption from the spill had seeped into lives of the people there as thoroughly as the oil had seeped into shoreline sediments and the livers of waterfowl. And in 2010, I spent a lot of time along, on, and above the Gulf of Mexico while oil freely gushed from the hole that BP had made in our coastal soul. There was the failure of the ‘blowout preventer’ to prevent the blowout, the crazy “junk shot” attempt to jam golf balls and shredded tires down a gushing well against the force of the upward-shooting oil, the ghastly photo of the nearly unrecognizable brown pelican jacketed in crude as it died. My chronicle of that summer of anguish became the book A Sea in Flames.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil from 2010 BP spill found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

February 4, 2015

Oil from 2010 BP spill found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

A new study suggests that up to 38 million liters of crude oil from the 2010 BP oil spill is resting on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico, posing a threat to the local ecosystem.

The findings have shed light on where ‘missing’ oil from the spill ended up — a quandary that puzzled U.S. government and BP officials during massive cleanup efforts in April, 2010.

Of the nearly 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the ocean, around 2 million remained unaccounted for, years after the disaster.

Florida researchers took 62 sediment samples from a 24,000 square kilometre space around the site of the BP oil spill and discovered that about 8,400 square km are covered with oil from spill.

“This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Jeff Chanton, the study’s lead researcher and a professor of chemical oceanography at Florida State University, said in a statement.

“Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Seeks BP Fine of Up to $18 Billion for Gulf Oil Spill Disaster – Bloomberg

December 21, 2014

U.S. Seeks BP Fine of Up to $18 Billion for Gulf Oil Spill Disaster – Bloomberg.

The government wants BP Plc (BP/) to pay $16 billion to $18 billion in water-pollution fines for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history while seeking more than $1 billion from the co-owner of the blown-out well that caused the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The federal government said BP deserves the maximum fine, which BP said would be the biggest Clean Water Act penalty ever and called it a “gross outlier” compared to other cases.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans ruled in September that London-based BP acted with gross negligence in drilling the well, a finding that quadruples the per-barrel penalty. As of Oct. 28, the company had set aside $3.51 billion for the penalties, saying that’s a reliable estimate of its liability if it wins an appeal of the judge’s ruling.

Barbier will conduct a non-jury trial next month to set pollution fines for BP and its well partner,Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC), after weighing multiple factors including the spill’s size and the level of responsibility each company bears for the disaster.

“APC’s culpability is minimal compared to that of BPXP,” the government said in today’s filing, referring to Anadarko and BP’s exploration unit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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