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Greenpeace claims edge over Statoil

A decision by Statoil to end a campaign in the arctic waters of the Barents Sea shows it never should have drilled there in the first place, Greenpeace said. Norwegian energy company Statoil said it ended its campaign in the frontier Hoop area of the Barents Sea. Small volumes of hydrocarbons were encountered, but nothing in the way of a commercial discovery. The drilling program was the target of a Greenpeace protest aimed at highlighting the risks of operating in the pristine arctic environment. The Hoop reserve area is near Bear Island, a unique island ecosystem that Greenpeace said would be spoiled should a spill occur in the area. Truls Gulowsen, director of the Norwegian branch of Greenpeace, said dry wells in the Hoop area suggest it’s the arctic environment itself that’s rejecting the presence of oil companies like Statoil. "The licenses should never have been awarded in the […]

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U.S. considers arctic Alaska lease for 2017

The U.S. government said it was calling for information about the oil and natural gas resource potential in the Beaufort Sea off the northern coast of Alaska. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it wanted to find out more about the oil and gas that could lie in the area as it plans a possible lease sale for 2017. In April, Royal Dutch Shell said that, as traditional oil and gas reserves decline, oil companies will have to look to more challenging locations to keep up with global energy demand. Shell in January suspended efforts to explore Alaskan waters because of costs and court challenges to its exploration campaign. The company maintained the energy potential offshore Alaska may be "enormous." Acting BOEM Director Walter Cruikshank said the federal government is committed to stepping lightly in the northern arctic region off the Alaskan coast. "There […]

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WWF: Arctic Oil Well Blowout Could Spread More Than 1,000 Km

CALGARY, Alberta, July 25 (Reuters) – Oil from a spill or oil well blowout in the Arctic waters of Canada’s Beaufort Sea could easily become trapped in sea ice and potentially spread more than 1,000 kilometres to the west coast of Alaska, a World Wildlife Fund study showed on Friday. The WWF contracted RPS Applied Science Associates to model 22 different oil spill scenarios and map the spread of the oil, potential impact on the water and shoreline, and interaction with sea ice, wildlife and the surrounding ecology. Types of oil spills analysed included shipping spills, shallow-water blowouts and deep-water blowouts. The BP Plc Macondo oil well rupture in 2010 that unleashed more than four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico was a deep-water blowout. The remote Beaufort Sea is a section of the Arctic Ocean that spans the Canada-U.S. border. It comprises about 476,000 square […]

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Shipping Firms to Add Arctic LNG Route

Shipping companies in China and Japan said they would start a regular service to carry Siberian natural gas across the Arctic Ocean to East Asia, showing how Asian demand for the fuel is reshaping global shipping routes. Wednesday’s announcement by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. and China Shipping Development Co. offered new details of how liquefied natural gas will get from one of the remotest locations on earth— the $27 billion Yamal LNG facility being developed in western Siberia—to urban areas in China and Japan. China Shipping Development said its joint venture with Mitsui O.S.K. would spend $932 million on three LNG carriers equipped with ice breakers, to be built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. of South Korea. Service is set to begin as soon as 2018. Once virtually impassable, the Arctic Ocean is now attracting interest as a shipping route because global warming has reduced the ice […]

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Gazprom Neft readies for arctic drilling

Russian energy company said it plans to conduct drilling operations in the northern Pechora Sea during the ice-free months of 2014. The company said a drilling platform was delivered to the Dolginskoye field in the arctic waters of the Pechora Sea. "An exploration well will be drilled from the platform during the ice-free months of 2014 to further investigate the field’s geological structure and prepare it for full-scale development," the company said in a statement Monday. Changing weather patterns are leaving parts of the arctic region ice-free for longer periods of time, giving energy companies more time to try to exploit the estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 1.6 quadrillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas thought to lie beneath the arctic waters. Gazprom Neft is the oil arm of the Russian energy company Gazprom, which was the target of Greenpeace demonstrations against arctic […]

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US BOEM aims for revised Chukchi Sea analysis in spring

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told a US District Court in Alaska on Friday it will have a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale prepared by August and publication of a Final EIS by February. Under the schedule the final action, publication of the record of decision, would occur in March. Whether Shell would have time to mobilize for a 2015 summer drilling season in the Arctic is uncertain, however. "We are considering the implications of the timeline presented in the status report and continue to work with the Department of Interior. We have made no decisions on the timing for our future exploration plans offshore Alaska," Shell spokeswoman Meg Baldino said Tuesday in a statement. Shell has been exploring in the region and hopes to resume drilling in 2015 on leases the company acquired in the 2008 lease sale. The […]

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Oil Giants Set Their Sights on Arctic Waters

Shell stirred controversy with its 2012 drilling program in the Chukchi Sea off northwest Alaska, the first there in more than two decades. Big oil is eager for another crack at drilling in the oil- and gas-rich Arctic offshore. But that renewed interest comes amid intense scrutiny in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Encouraged by higher crude prices, better technology and steep costs that pose barriers to entry for all but the deepest pockets, heavyweights such as PLC, Chevron Corp. , ConocoPhillips , Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have spent billions of dollars to snap up offshore Arctic leases. The Arctic holds about one-third of the world’s untapped natural gas and 13% of as yet undiscovered crude, or roughly 90 billion barrels of oil, and more than three-quarters of those deposits are offshore, according to U.S. Geological […]

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Exxon Unit in Canada Seeks Deep Arctic Well

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Canadian subsidiary is considering plans for what would be the deepest offshore well ever drilled in the Arctic, increasing some environmentalists’ concerns about how the company would respond to a blowout. Imperial Oil Ltd. submitted a project description last September to Canadian regulators for a proposed exploratory well so deep that it would likely take two to four years to complete. The well could extend about 6 miles beneath the floor of the Beaufort Sea, according to a study commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts, an environmental watchdog. Imperial’s filing didn’t specify a well depth, but the unpublished Pew study, prepared by a third-party engineering consultant, calculated it as roughly 34,000 feet. "These wells may be drilled over 6 miles deep, and will need complex well casing, cementing and drilling plans to address the technical challenges of drilling deep high pressure wells," the report said. […]

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Rosneft sees huge potential in arctic resources

Taking advantage of the resource potential in the Russian arctic is one of the top priorities for oil company Rosneft, President Igor Sechin said. The board of directors at Rosneft said Monday they were ready to start working in the arctic waters of Russia through a joint effort with U.S. energy company Exxon Mobil. Sechin said in an announcement coinciding with the release of the company’s first-quarter financial report that arctic exploration was an integral part of Rosneft’s strategy for the year. "Monetization of Russia’s enormous resource potential in the offshore arctic is the key priority for the company," he said in a statement Wednesday. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the arctic holds 13 percent, or about 90 billion barrels, of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 1.6 quadrillion cubic feet, or about 30 percent, of the world’s undiscovered natural gas. Sechin said exploration […]

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Wrong Type of Ice Hampers the Northern Sea Route

Energy giants SA, Russia’s OAO Novatec and China National Petroleum Co. are investing $27 billion to develop Yamal LNG, one of the world’s biggest gas export facilities deep inside the Arctic Circle in western Siberia. Yamal, "the end of the earth," in the local Nenets language, will require building LNG tankers powerful enough to smash through heavy ice. But engineers still haven’t figured out how to evacuate crew from those tankers in an emergency—underscoring how some of the industry’s trickiest obstacles in the Arctic are also some of the most basic. As warming seas melt arctic ice, shipping executives have been exploring the prospect of more commercial voyages through once-impassable waters. One of the most promising new thoroughfares is the Northern Sea Route, a passage through one of Russia’s northernmost archipelagoes. During a few warm months of each year, the route is now increasingly passable to ship traffic. Traversing […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple