There are polar bears at risk from oil drilling in the Arctic and now dolphins at risk in the UK. The future of Britain’s most famous dolphins is at risk from oil and gas exploration, conservationists say. The bottlenose dolphins of the Moray Firth in Scotland are the best known and most studied dolphins in … Read More
Offshore
Shell Bids Over $2 Billion for Alaskan Oil Leases
Stuff the bears lets get drilling – that’s the message from oil giant Shell, which has emerged as the highest bidder for 275 lease blocks in the Chukchi sea offshore northwest Alaska. Shell’s bids amounted to $2.1 billion of the $3.4 billion bid overall. The sale went forward over the protest of conservation and Native … Read More
‘Huge’ Gas Field Found off Brazil
Brazil says it has found another “elephant.” This time it is a huge natural gas field called, Jupiter, which could match the recently discovered Tupi oil field in size. The field has been found a short distance off Rio de Janeiro’s coastline. While not providing any specific details on the size of the new reserve, … Read More
Alaska: Oil Plan Threatens Polar Bears
Environment groups are coming together to protest against plans by the US government to open up a vast area of Arctic sea off Alaska for oil exploration, arguing it poses an unacceptable new threat to polar bears and walruses. The Minerals and Management Service, MMS, said it would be seeking bids for petroleum licences in … Read More
Iceland Opens Up New Arctic Oil Front
Sod the climate, let’s back to business as usual, including the Arctic oil rush. Its Iceland’s turn now. The country is going to offer companies exclusive oil and gas exploration licences in the Dreki area of the north Atlantic. The area lies to the northeast of Iceland, between it and the Arctic island of Jan … Read More
Another Week, Another Oil Spill
Suddenly another week cannot go past without another oil spill. Recently, we have had spills in Russia, California, South Korea and now Norway. Yesterday, about 25,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Norwegian sector of the North Sea at the Statfjord oil field. It is Norway’s second worst oil spill, and yet it is hardly … Read More
Statoil Begins Arctic Drilling
Statoil, the Norwegian national oil company, has begun a two-year drilling programme in Arctic waters to determine the potential of Norway’s share of one of the world’s few remaining unexplored oil prospects. It also hopes to co-operate with Russian companies such as Gazprom to find oil and gas further into the Arctic, including areas disputed … Read More
90 Airlifted After Fire on North Sea Platform
Last week we blogged how over half the rigs in the North Sea failed safety checks. As if to highlight the problem, a major evacuation operation was launched yesterday after a fire broke out on a remote North Sea oil platform. Ninety of the 159 people on board the Thistle Alpha platform, 120 miles north-west … Read More
North Sea: Over Half Rigs Fail Safety Checks
The safety regime at Britain’s North Sea oil operators has been condemned after a report found almost 60% of oil platforms had problems that oil companies should have addressed. The report, by the Health and Safety Executive, argues the industry had lost the trust of the regulator as a result of the failings uncovered by … Read More
“God is Brazilian!”
“God is Brazilian,” declared the country’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after his government’s announcement earlier this month that massive new oil reserves had been discovered offshore. Brazil’s government and the state-run oil company Petrobras announced two weeks ago that exploration of its Tupi offshore field showed it had enough to increase national oil … Read More