No new drilling permits in GOM

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by smoke, Jun 3, 2010.

  1. smoke

    smoke 100+ Posts

    I discovered this morning that the MMS is currently not approving any drilling permits in the GOM, regardless of water depth. Originally, it had been everything deeper than 500' water depth was being rejected.

    When it rains, it pours.......

    I do not know of any timeline on how long this will last. The real fix is to budget the MMS properly so they can get the adequate personnel to regulate the industry.
     
  2. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    I think this is known as not letting a crisis go to waste.
     
  3. Texas007

    Texas007 1,000+ Posts

    the funny thing is that the problem had not one thing to do with drilling, but hey lets not waste an opportunity to:
    1. drive up prices
    2. Use that as a reason we need cap and tax to get alternatives that do not work
    3. cost the oil indsutry millions
    4. put people out of work
    5. stop capital flow so we can further run our ****** economy into the ground
    5.?
    6.profit

    Not only is there no new drilling, but existing projects that were being drilled have been orderd to stop which wastes money, puts workers out of jobs, etc. great response to a disaster in federal waters for which the government did not prepare even with a full intinerary of exactly what to do given them in 1994. They failed to have the equpiment, and personnell anywhere nearby to act in case something like this were to happen. Of couse given the impeccable safety record out there perhaps they just thought there was no reason to worry.
     
  4. MAROON

    MAROON 250+ Posts

    this will be devastating to many small businesses on the gulf coast that serve the offshore industry, including all the workers.

    so basically now, we'll have three industries killed - o&g, fishing, tourism.
     
  5. rivet

    rivet 500+ Posts

    Our gov't allowed a habitual violator (BP) to continue to operate despite WILLFUL disregard to regulations. Fines, probation, more fines did not deter BP from cheating. Once one studies the BP record, the Macondo disaster comes as no surprise and probably should have been expected.
    I have to say that our government is responsible for this oil disaster
    . The criminals (BP) have not been contained nor have they been rehabilitated. They are still running wild out there. Our government failed us again, miserably.

    Now what is our gov't doing? Stopping the better companies from drilling? No surprise. Jindal wrote a letter to Obama asking Obama to allow continued drilling. Jindal is suffering, not Obama.

    The Link
     
  6. PhantomHorn

    PhantomHorn 1,000+ Posts

    Also this morning CNBC announced oil inventories were over a million barrels below projected levels. Get ready for another price spike in our not to distant future.
     
  7. Longhorny630

    Longhorny630 1,000+ Posts

    Is it really that big of a tourism killer? None of the sights that I associate with Louisiana are it's coast line, they're all in the city where the water isn't (or usually isn't). It's all wetlands, terrible beaches, terrible waves, if anything they should try and use the oil as a tourism boost to get people to come look at the stuff.
     
  8. Roger

    Roger 1,000+ Posts

    Longhorny630, I think the hurt to tourism probably has more to do with Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida whose beaches are going to be less frequented in the next couple of months. As for Louisiana I think maybe the cost of seafood going up would potentially hurt their tourism in New Orleans.
     
  9. BrothaHorn

    BrothaHorn 1,000+ Posts

    Typical, punish everyone for 1 company's mistakes. I guess the president doesn't care about oil workers and the folks that depend on them. Also, the left is definitely going to use this to advance some kind of climate bill. We are so going to be fooked.
     
  10. Texas007

    Texas007 1,000+ Posts

    Wonder when Barack is going to give back his million from BP? Wait, i thought he said he didn't take money from "big oil". I also want to know why bush is blamed for katrina when that was a state issue to handle the evac, and not a fed issue until fema was involved after the storm, but when there is a catastrophe in federal waters where our government should be doing something the governor of the state impacted cannot even get a respones 36 days after requesting permission to build islands to protect those senstitive wildlife preserves on his coast. But yeah, stopping drilling is really going to help? What a freaking moron we have in charge.
     
  11. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    You are nuts if you think any president wouldn't stop further drilling until this accident is thourougly investigated. OK, except Bush.
    People are screaming about this, and there has basically been no progress in even slowing the flow of oil from this well.
    You think there will be more permits issued to drill in the same area? Really?
    At least fix this situation before going on to more permits.
    There's going to be an investigation, more regulations, and a serious consideration of ceasing drilling at least in deep water, I guarantee that much. And I'm not even against offshore drilling like a lot of people are.
    This situation is not good, and it's going to be addressed in some manner before business as usual resumes, if it ever does.
     
  12. Third Coast

    Third Coast 10,000+ Posts

    what accuratehorn said
     
  13. Texas007

    Texas007 1,000+ Posts

    well there are only about 300,000 wells out there producing right now, and we get one blow out from a complany known to pay off government regulators, and skirt rules so the admin taking the money from them decides to shut down all drilling which was not even the cause, or problem of this disaster? Yeah. Makes perfect sense. I could see not issuing anything new until we get this stopped, and figure out a way to go forward, but stopping all currently permitted jobs is idiotic, and does nothing to solve the actual problem.
     
  14. smoke

    smoke 100+ Posts

    I reality is (and I can somewhat understand this) that the government's reasoning is that if another similar disaster occurs, they will have nobody left to respond to it as 90% of all of the OSV's are already focused on the cleanup or killing the existing blowout.

    I'm assuming that once the well is killed, they will resume approving permits for shelf drilling. Deepwater on the other hand may take 6-12 months for them to upgrade the CFR's as well as update the MMS approval process (along with the manpower within the MMS as well).
     
  15. Oilfield

    Oilfield Guest

    The ironic thing about this shutdown is that BP is one of the least affected operators.
     
  16. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    This ruling was clarified, BTW, and it applies only to new deep water wells, not the standard well over the continental shelf in shallower water. It was reported at first that it applied to all permits, but apparently someone misspoke or misinterpreted the policy.
    That makes sense at this time, because even though the president knows we need oil, this accident must be investigated, and any policy changes and regulations put in place before allowing more deepwater drilling. There has to be an attempt to prevent similar incidents in the future.
     
  17. smoke

    smoke 100+ Posts

    Accurate, this is "accurate" (no pun intended). However, there is some discrepancy on what is actually being done with the MMS and what the Interior Department is saying. The head of the MMS had written a note to an operator that their permit was being denied (shelf well).

    I believe now that the Interior Dept has overruled and confirmed that the MMS will approve shelf work to try to maintain some job security in the GOM region.

    I suppose we'll see how it goes next week.
     
  18. YoLaDu

    YoLaDu Guest

    I guess my response would be, what if a similar accident were to happen a month from now on another rig?

    Would there be anyone on here calling out the Administration for not putting a stop to deep sea drilling in order for a thorough procedural review after the wake of the BP disaster?

    I imagine there would be.
     
  19. smoke

    smoke 100+ Posts

    Yo - it's a valid question, but I would say extremely remote. There is always a risk of something like the Macondo incident, but I'm envisioning that the MMS will be more stringent on what it approves. Additionally, the operator will also place more emphasis on their job design to prevent the posisbility of a blowout occuring.

    I've said this several times, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in - BP took several risks during this well. Worse yet, they failed to react to the well control indicators when they first occured. You can't necessarily treat it like it's an isolated incident, but it's safe to say it's pretty unlikely that it will be duplicated.
     
  20. Texas007

    Texas007 1,000+ Posts


     
  21. rivet

    rivet 500+ Posts

    What if muslim countries want to come drill in the gulf?
     

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