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ExxonMobil Selling Cook Inlet Assets, Remains Committed to Alaska

As part of its goal to become a dominant player in Alaska’s energy industry, Hilcorp Energy is reportedly buying the Cook Inlet assets owned by XTO Energy, an Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary. Suann Guthrie, a media advisory for XTO Energy in Fort Worth, confirmed to Rigzone that XTO has agreed to sell its interest in the Cook Inlet, which include 29 producing wells from two platforms and an onshore facility to Hilcorp Alaska. Altogether, the assets produced about 2,000 barrels of oil per day in 2014. The deal isn’t expected to run into regulatory hurdles from the state of Alaska. Guthrie said the divestment will impact some XTO employees, but all workers will receive job offers from Hilcorp or be reassigned within XTO’s other operations. “ExxonMobil remains committed to its operations in Alaska. This sale does not impact ExxonMobil’s other Alaska operations or early planning activities for a possible […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Archbishop of Canterbury Concerned About Arctic Drilling

LONDON—Oil companies need to do more to tackle climate change, the Archbishop of Canterbury said Tuesday, noting he was particularly concerned about the recent push to drill in Arctic Ocean waters. Archbishop Justin Welby, the leader of more 85 million Anglicans and Episcopalians around the world, didn’t speak about the most immediate foray being made into the Alaskan Arctic by Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.29 % PLC. But he mentioned some of the same arguments made by environmentalists who oppose Shell’s drilling campaign, which begins this month in the Chukchi Sea. In the Arctic, “the drilling window is very, very limited and if you have a blowout towards the end of the window it might be eight or nine months before you drill a relief well and cap the flow,” said Archbishop Welby, a former oil-company executive before he was ordained. A Shell spokesman said in an email that […]

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Shell Arctic oil drilling to commence within weeks

Arctic oil rig Oil and gas giant Shell is expected to begin drilling for oil in the Arctic within the next two weeks. Thirty ships left Dutch Harbor in Alaska on Thursday for the Arctic to support two initial exploratory wells. The company has already committed about $7bn (£4.5bn) to the controversial project, and is confident it will find huge quantities of oil in the region. But if the initial wells do not find oil, Shell will contemplate walking away from the region entirely. The US Department of the Interior gave the green light to Shell to commence Arctic oil exploration in May this year, and the Anglo-Dutch group clearly believes it will get the remaining necessary permits in the next week or two. The initial two wells will be in relatively shallow water of about 40 to 50m deep, off the coast of Alaska, and they will use […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Shell Arctic oil drilling to commence within weeks

Arctic oil rig Oil and gas giant Shell is expected to begin drilling for oil in the Arctic within the next two weeks. Thirty ships left Dutch Harbor in Alaska on Thursday for the Arctic to support two initial exploratory wells. The company has already committed about $7bn (£4.5bn) to the controversial project, and is confident it will find huge quantities of oil in the region. But if the initial wells do not find oil, Shell will contemplate walking away from the region entirely. The US Department of the Interior gave the green light to Shell to commence Arctic oil exploration in May this year, and the Anglo-Dutch group clearly believes it will get the remaining necessary permits in the next week or two. The initial two wells will be in relatively shallow water of about 40 to 50m deep, off the coast of Alaska, and they will use […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Is Arctic oil a losing gamble?

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of International Law and the Arctic , which was awarded the Donner Prize in 2014. Eighty-three billion barrels: That’s how much oil could be present in the Arctic, according to a high-profile U.S. geological survey report released in 2008. But the wave of excitement from the report is now receding, as some harsh realities sink in. First, 83 billion barrels is not actually that much. It would provide enough oil to satisfy world demand for just three years at our current level of consumption. Second, the report was an estimate of undiscovered reserves, based on some broad geological assumptions, since most of the Arctic has not yet been subject to exploratory drilling. Third, 83 billion includes reserves that are technically, but not necessarily economically, recoverable. This […]

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Activists deploy against Shell’s arctic plans

MUKILTEO, Wash., June 29 (UPI) — Activists said Monday they took to the water off the Washington state coast in kayaks to try to slow progress of a Shell drilling rig bound for arctic waters. "We know we can’t stop them," Carlo Voli, a campaigner from advocacy group 350 Seattle, said in an emailed statement. "But we can’t just watch them go; we have to do all we can to slow them down, and get people to focus on what a disaster Arctic drilling would be." Voli and others pushed off from the Washington state coast to protest against the Noble Discoverer drilling rig as it leaves for the arctic waters off the coast of Alaska. Voli and several others were arrested in early June for similar action against the rig, Polar Pioneer. Noble Discoverer suffered setbacks during a 2012 campaign off the coast of Alaska and activists said […]

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Exxon Mobil, BP Suspend Canadian Arctic Exploratory Drilling Program in Beaufort Sea

The move represents a setback for oil companies active in Canada’s arctic waters and follows a similar decision by Chevron Corp. CVX 0.26 % in December to halt its own exploratory drilling program in the Beaufort Sea . Those projects have been stymied by regulatory hurdles and some of the world’s highest extraction costs. Imperial Oil Ltd. IMO 0.60 % , Exxon Mobil’s Canadian affiliate, informed federal regulators in Canada of its decision to suspend its Beaufort Sea exploratory program on Friday and said it would seek to have its current lease extended retroactively to 16 years. “If approved, the extension would provide sufficient time to undertake the necessary technical studies and develop the technology and processes to support responsible development in the Beaufort Sea,” Imperial Oil said in a letter to Canada’s National Energy Board. The Arctic holds billions of barrels of untapped oil reserves, but offshore-drilling costs […]

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Alaska’s glaciers are now losing 75 billion tons of ice every year

In a new study , scientists with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and several other institutions report a staggering finding: Glaciers of the United States’ largest — and only Arctic — state, Alaska, have lost 75 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion metric tons) of ice per year from 1994 through 2013. For comparison, that’s roughly half of a recent estimate for ice loss for all of Antarctica (159 billion metric tons). It takes 360 gigatons of ice to lead to one millimeter of sea level rise, which implies that the Alaska region alone may have contributed several millimeters in the past few decades. “Despite Greenland’s ice covered area being 20 times greater than that of Alaska, losses in Alaska were fully one third of the total loss from the ice sheet during 2005-2010,” wrote the authors, led by Chris Larsen of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks’s […]

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U.S. House mulls arctic drilling

House committee hears testimony on the wisdom of exploiting the potential reserves held in the arctic waters off the coast of Alaska. Photo by ziggysofi/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) — Drilling offshore, particularly in arctic regions offshore Alaska, won’t do much to wean the United States off foreign oil, a U.S. House committee heard. A House subcommittee on energy resources held an oversight hearing on reserves thought to be in arctic waters and how they could potentially impact U.S. leverage overseas. Sen. John Cornyn , R-Texas, said in early June that moving more domestic oil to the global market could "strengthen the strategic hand of the United States." Michael LeVine, a senior counsel on the Pacific region for advocacy group Oceana, told the House committee that arctic waters alone weren’t enough to protect the U.S. economy from overseas shocks. "Offshore drilling in the United States, particularly in the Arctic […]

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Activists arrested in Shell protest

Greenpeace activists arrested by U.S. Coast Guard officials during protest against Shell drilling plans offshore Alaska. Photo courtesy of Greenpeace. SEATTLE, June 16 (UPI) — Fourteen activists from Greenpeace were arrested by federal authorities during a protest against Shell’s arctic Alaska program off the coast of Seattle. Activists took to kayaks to protest against Shell’s use of the Port of Seattle as a staging ground for summer plans to drill off the coast of Alaska. Shell is proposing as many as six wells in a region known as the Burger prospect, located in shallow waters, using the Noble Discoverer and Polar Pioneer rigs. The Greenpeace activists were part of a larger group of around 50 protestors. Each of the Greenpeace activists were released and issued citations of $250. "Every minute that brave protesters can delay Shell’s Arctic drilling plans is another chance for President Obama to reconsider his disastrous […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple