Offshore Oil and Gass

This paper will discuss the political and legal aspects of the maritime disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean and the factors relevant to their conciliation. The first part of the paper introduces the Mediterranean Sea and the relevance of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime in its basins. Subsequently, the author summarizes relevant historical cleavages in the Levant Basin, with a focus on relevant modern Lebanese-Israeli, Lebanese-Syrian and inter-Cypriot events. Part III will discuss the increasing interest in EEZ delimitation over the past decade due to hydrocarbon prospects in the Eastern Mediterranean and the geopolitical and maritime challenges that have since taken shape. Finally, based on the Law of the Sea and previous examples from around the world, the author discusses relevant legal avenues for achieving balanced solutions to maritime tensions in the region and presents the most relevant criteria in delimiting maritime boundaries.

The author aims to present the broadest possible context of the Baltic Pipe project, including legal, and to some extent, economic considerations, which ought to be scrutinized along with the broader geopolitical considerations surrounding present energy-related race in Baltic Sea. The aim is to juxtapose the long-lasting Russo-German strategic partnership resting on the development of Nord Stream(s) pipeline surpassing Poland on the one side, with a collection of pipe-dream moves ushered by Washington and aimed at upending this partnership, the Baltic Pipe project included, on the other side. Sec 2 looks at the Nord Stream(s) project as the direct competitor of the Baltic Pipe, and at the efforts by both the US government and the EU institutions to undermine Russo-German co-operation, thereby helping the viability of the Baltic Pipe. The discussion of the Nord Stream(s) covers US’ attempts to torpedo the Nord Stream 2 with sanctions imposed in December 2019 (sec 2.1) and the EU’s crusade against the Nord Stream via blocking the full capacity use of the OPAL pipeline since 2009 (sec 2.2). Sec 3 looks at the US’s and Germany’s energy strategies toward the CEE, including the energy dimension of the US-led Three Seas Initiative (sec 3.1), which favour the Baltic Pipe project, and Germany’s Energiewende which is at odds with this project (sec 3.2). Secs 4 and 5 look at drivers for advancing the Baltic Pipe, which stem from the structure Poland’s electricity-generation market (sec 4) combined with Poland’s EU and international climate and emissions-related commitments (sec 5), which all force a country-wide shift to electricity-generation from natural gas. Section 6 looks at the Yamal Contract, which will secure gas supplies to Poland until it tentatively expires in 2022, and those supplies are entirely replaced with gas supplied via the Baltic Pipe. Finally, sec 7 looks at the regulatory issues, including the intergovernmental agreement on the Baltic Pipe (sec 7.1), funding of the project along with granted state aid (sec 7.2), and the permitting process (sec 7.3).

Considering the expanding industry for offshore units, offshore support vessels are also in the trend of increasing. In this sense, more complex and more demanding technologies are emerging especially for new designs of these type of vessels. Therefore, it is of great importance to have a framework based on risk assessment. In the maritime domain, risk is evaluated within the framework of the Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) which has become an internationally recognized and recommended method. This article discusses methodological requirements for the risk perspective of offshore support vessels. A perspective that is proposed here which considers risk as a set encompassing in the following: a set of plausible scenarios leading to an accident, the likelihoods of unwanted events within the scenarios, the consequences of the events and description of uncertainty. For this purpose, we introduce a qualitative scoring system, and we show its applicability on an exemplary risk model for an offshore support vessel.

Книга «Вышки над волнами» посвящена 30-летию Главного управления по разведке и разработке морских месторождений нефти и газа Мингазпрома СССР – Главморнефтегаз, созданного в августе 1978 года. По существу, это книга о становлении морской нефтегазодобычи в СССР. В книге собраны воспоминания работников системы Главморнефтегаза – от заместителей министра до работников производственных объединений и отраслевых институтов. Живым и образным языком ветераны Главморнефтегаза рассказывают об истории освоения континентального шельфа СССР, о непростой работе морских нефтяников и газовиков, их успехах и трудностях. В очерках даны портреты руководителей отрасли, внесших большой вклад в освоение морских месторождений нефти и газа, –С.А. Оруджева, Ю.В. Зайцева, В.И. Мищевича, С.И. Юдина и многих других. Издание богато иллюстрировано фотографиями из личных и производственных архивов.

The effects of top tension on stress utilization in pipe laying operations is a key component of pipeline installation design that must be critically analysed and ascertained if pipe laying
operations in subsea environment must be successful. Key considerations such as the water depth, pipe weight per unit length, span length, top tension, and environmental conditions of the target subsea environment cannot be over-emphasized.  The structural behaviour of the pipe system during installation operation is dependent on both the overall behaviour of the pipeline system, and the mechanism of load transfer between the installation vessel and the pipe, and seabed-pipe interaction at the touch down point (TDP).

This paper will illustrate the various methods of pipe laying systems available in the subsea industry and attempts to discuss the modus operandi for each. Key catenary equations for the pipe laying systems were also derived in relation to analysing the various force components acting on the pipeline system during its installation. In this light, case studies for three different pipeline configuration (Bare, Insulated and Pipe-in-Pipe Pipeline Systems) common in the industry were considered in relation to analysing and comparing the effects of hoop, bending and axial stresses at the TDP due to the applied top tension at the surface from the installation
vessel at different top tension ratio. It concludes by presenting the stress utilization curve (SUC) as a function of the top tension ratio for each of the pipe system being studied in lieu to exposing the effect of stress utilization for each of the pipeline during laying operations. Based on these studies, a few significant conclusions are drawn, providing the design and installation monitoring of deepwater pipeline with theoretical basis.

The present paper purports to analyse the main aspects relative to mutual and hold harmless indemnities, as they are used in upstream service contracts, in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. It argues that the mutual hold harmless concept is advantageous to the contracting parties and has great significance in the offshore oil and gas industry as “an efficient contractual tool, which lies outside traditional understanding of liability, and risk management in the law”.

Employees today are different. They are not the ones who do not have good opportunities, especially, experienced and talented ones. As soon as they feel dissatisfied with the current employer or the job due to lack of advancement opportunities, salary and remuneration and others, they switch over to the next. The result is that employers lose their invested resources to their competitors, corporate memory is lost, employee-customer relationships are strained and more over the moral of existing staff goes down. It is therefore very important that employers retain their employees, especially the good and experienced ones. Employee retention is a process in which employees are encouraged to remain with the organization for the maximum period of time or until the completion of a particular project. This study looks at the retention practices in Oil & Gas Sector, from the point of view of its employees and what role retention plays in their job performance. The study confirms that lack of advancement opportunities, work-life balance, lack of reward and recognition and salary and remuneration were more common reasons for departure among all employees. Retaining top talent is a primary concern for many organizations today and this study recommends that retention strategies should be aimed at retaining highly skilled personnel and at the same time building up under-performers. Feedback on employee performance is vital to building confidence in the retention practices of the Oil & Gas Sectors. In addition, employee value proposition as enshrined in the vision statement of the Oil & Gas Sectors must be upheld while management should be flexible in terms of work-life balance. This motivation of employees produces a culture of commitment to the objectives of the organization.

The story of deepwater Gulf of Mexico can be told through the story of Shell Oil's Mars Project.  Mars was one of the earliest prospects to be drilled and developed on some of the first federal deepwater leases offered in the early 1980s.  In the late 2010s, thirty-five years later, it remains one of the most productive basins in the Gulf at the cutting edge of technology.  More than any other project in the Gulf of Mexico, Mars documents the wide-ranging innovations that have propelled the industry into ever-deeper waters and new geological frontiers.  It provides a window into the evolution of geophysical technology and interpretation, drilling and well completion, platform and facilities design, workforce organization and culture, process engineering, subsea engineering, reservoir engineering, pipelining, project management, disaster management, and safety management.  Mars marks the transition from fixed to floating production platforms in deepwater, and from “conventional” deepwater to subsalt deepwater.  It also had a starring role in the industry’s recovery from two traumatic disasters, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo blowout and spill in 2010.  Finally, the 2014 installation of a second, state-of-the-art production facility in the same field once again placed Mars in the forefront of offshore development.

This essay is part of a multi-media website,  https://dsps.lib.uiowa.edu/mars-deepwater-gulf/, devoted to documenting, analyzing, and displaying the history of this American energy asset and others in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. 

The website features the following resources:

• Two historical essays:  “Shell Oil’s Deepwater Mission to Mars,” by Tyler Priest; and “The Shape of These Monsters: From Fixed to Floating Offshore Oil and Gas Production, 1976-2006,” by Joel Hewett.
• A 30-year timeline of significant moments in the history of Shell’s greater Mars development.
• A photo gallery of the Mars TLP and its people, equipment, and projects.
• A video collection featuring the Mars, Ursa, and Olympus tension-leg platforms, along with many others in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (more than 80 total).
• A series of graphs that illustrate the evolution of deepwater projects and production in the Gulf of Mexico.
• A series of Gulf of Mexico maps, including:  an interactive ArcGIS Gulf of Mexico Map that displays Gulf of Mexico leases, platforms, pipelines, and boundaries; an interactive ArcGIS Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Story Map that highlights 17 major deepwater facilities; and an interactive ArcGIS Onshore Oil and Gas Infrastructure Map that displays onshore, lower-48 U.S. oil and gas infrastructure and its offshore connections.
• A “Martian Stories” site for oral histories and personal recollections.

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The Arctic – with almost a third of the world’s remaining natural gas and thirteen percent of its oil – is one of the globe’s last frontiers for competition over unexplored natural resources. The rapid pace of Arctic melting due to climate change has created opportunities to extract the region’s previously inaccessible offshore oil and gas. The 2015 controversy over the Obama Administration’s approval of Shell Oil’s drilling in the Chukchi Sea followed by the company’s decision to pull out highlighted the need for clear and effective regulation of Arctic drilling.
Offshore oil spills are difficult to prevent and clean up, as showcased by the BP Deepwater Horizon accident – which occurred in an environment not plagued by Arctic ice and weather extremes. The complexity and fragmentation of existing governance arrangements further complicate matters. Numerous public and private entities are currently developing standards for Arctic drilling and spill response as new projects and accidents highlight the urgency of addressing risks.

This Article makes a novel proposal for addressing these challenges through what it terms “hybrid cooperation.” In this form of cooperation, diverse public and private stakeholders at multiple governmental levels coordinate their efforts through either: (1) creating institutions or (2) integrating each other’s standards in agreements and regulations. The Article uses original case studies to assess the possibilities for hybrid cooperation to make Arctic drilling safer and to create more cohesive governance. It argues that this convergence of standards and stakeholders, while piecemeal, helps to develop norms for how to operate in the Arctic. More broadly, this concept of hybrid cooperation – which draws from and contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on hybrid governance – can shed light on governance challenges in other areas, such as humanitarian crisis management, transnational investment, climate change, and whaling.

The unequal bargaining power of the parties in the oil and gas industry has lead to the imbalanced contractual risk allocation in oilfield contracts in Malaysia. In this regard, there is a prospect that the operators pass an unfair share of the risks on to the contractors. However, the contractors might still enter into such imbalanced agreement to secure a job and thereby assume these risks. In this paper, it is argued that a statutory controlling mechanism, such as Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA) in the UK, should be adopted to protect the liability of the contractor in relation to the risk allocation provisions of oilfield contracts in Malaysia. This paper seeks to analyse the deficiencies of the risk allocation provisions of oilfield contracts in Malaysia and to consider whether the principle of reasonableness test as provided in UCTA could provide a potential solution. It will employ a combination of case study and analysis.

Since 1868, when cannon barrels were regularly magnetised in order to find defects, electromagnetics have been a part of the inspection industry.

Despite ‘magnetisms’ long and distinguished history, even today, very few people can offer a physical model that provides a coherent explanation for how a magnet moves an object through space without physical contact.

For inspection engineers, working directly with electromagnetics, magnetism is not a ‘theoretical’ subject but something practical. Logical inconsistencies within teaching materials, inevitably leads to low competencies and an inability to improvise on the job.

This paper seeks to provide inspection engineers with a practical insights into electromagnetic phenomena. It examines the logic of most of the explanations commonly offered to those engineers studying the subject, or who regularly work with electromagnetics in the course of their careers.

As an alternative to these standard models, this paper serves as an introduction to the Rope Hypothesis, which is examined in the context of practical electromagnetic inspection. Problems and alternatives to the Rope Hypothesis are also discussed with the intention of providing the engineer with a deeper understanding of the subject.

􀀌􀀍􀀉􀀅􀀅􀀎􀀊􀀏􀀇 􀀉􀀐􀀇Splash zone crossing of structures with large horizontal surface (e.g. manifolds) and structures having large weight variation in the water and air ( e.g. suction anchors) are of particular concern. This is due to the large slamming forces and added mass of the structures, which results in high dynamic loads on the crane 􀀅􀀑􀀍􀀒􀀌􀀑􀀒􀀍􀀋􀀅􀀇 􀀓. The solution to this could be attaching a Passive Heave Compensator (PHC) between the 􀀃􀀄􀀍􀀏􀀋􀀇 􀀆􀀉􀀍􀀎􀀈􀀉􀀊􀀑􀀄􀀃􀀇crane hook and the payload. This not only reduces the dynamic peak loads on the crane, but also mitigates the risk of slack wire situation during splash zone crossing. This work analyzes the deployment of a subsea manifold with and without a PHC􀀅􀀒􀀍􀀐􀀄􀀌􀀋􀀇 􀀔􀀋􀀕􀀏􀀕in the North Sea, at a water depth of 370m. A detailed dynamic analyses is done for a sea-state of 3m Hs, over a range of Tz periods varying from 3s to 13s. it is concluded that by using a PHC for offshore lifting, reduction in maximum crane wire tension, in slack wires, in landing velocities and in crane tip velocity is achieved. Furthermore,the use of a PHC helps in increasing the weather window, as lifting can be performed in lower Tz periods. However, the use of PHC is recommended for short to medium wave periods, as its efficiency decreases at lower wave period.

Over the last few years, enormous efforts have been made to improve the energy sector by enhancing sustainability. The application of sustainable design approaches, the selection of low-impact materials, waste recycling and reuse, among others, are all factors in the construction of offshore platforms. The examination of offshore platform sustainability performance, including the creation of quantification methodologies, indicators, and other metrics, has also been extensively researched around the world. We welcome articles that examine the design and analysis of offshore structures, sustainable development, wind turbine design, oil and gas platform design, market reviews, literature reviews and research papers on the asset standpoint to be submitted to this special issue. We encourage research into the characteristics of different components of the oil and gas industry, from design, exploration and transfer, and related issues like oil spillage, oil recovery, carbon capture and geotechnical survey. The main goal of this special issue is to address the key challenges, thereby promoting research on offshore structures. You are encouraged to contribute a research or comprehensive review article for consideration for publication in Sustainability, an international Open Access journal which provides an advanced forum for research findings in areas related to sustainability and sustainable development. The journal publishes original research articles, reviews, conference proceedings (peer-reviewed full articles) and communications. It is confidently expressed that you will find the journal contributes to enhancing understanding of sustainability and fostering initiatives and applications of sustainability-based measures and activities. The submission deadline is 15th December, 2022.

The following is me keynote presentation at the 3rd World Congress on Climate Change and Global Warming, Dubai, UAE, October 2017.

My aim is to show how legislative processes ostensibly aimed at drafting laws that embody justice and equality have become systemically co-opted and corrupted through the machinations of legislators beholden to a donor class whose profit-objectives depend on the unfettered extraction of hydrocarbons.  It’s thus no surprise that the denial of anthropogenic climate change has come to inform not only energy-legislation, but potentially all law-making insofar it has become imperative to insure against profit-suffocating regulation. Senator James Inhofe offers an apt example.  In 2015 he sponsored two bills, one acknowledging that climate change real, but denying that it’s anthropogenic; another to make English the official language of the U.S., the “English Unity Act of 2015.”  While the first attempts to circumvent the debate concerning climate change, the second aims to discourage border crossings; two apparently different issues until we realize that many migrants are climate change refugees. Inhofe denies climate change but tacitly recognizes that it produces conditions for migration. He calls human-made global warming a “hoax,” but sponsors a bill to deter migrants seeking to flee its consequences. Throughout Inhofe’s defense of the two bills, he refers to illegal immigrants as drug-runners and terrorists, a narrative that offers just what he needs: it detracts from the facts about climate change refugees and provides “justification” for policies like President Trump’s “wall.”  It provides apparent substance to the American president’s references to “radical Islamic terrorists” alleged to cross from the South, and helps to justify U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.  In the world according to climate change denial, drafting law is less about social or environmental justice and more about insuring the hegemony of multinational energy interests. There are no winners.  But there are losers: a planet that can no longer support human life makes refugees of us all.

Una secuencia sísmica, que culminó en terremotos de magnitud hasta 4.3, se originó en septiembre y octubre de 2013 frente a las costas de Castellón (España), cerca de donde se estaba inyectando subterráneamente gas natural para almacenarlo en un yacimiento petrolífero agotado (el llamado Proyecto Castor). Este artículo analiza esta serie de terremotos desde el punto de vista tectónico y sismológico, y su relación con la inyección de gas.

The article is open access, so there is a permanent DOI link:
https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000413

Or Journal of Global History link, which will change at some point in time:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-global-history/article/asias-oceanic-anthropocene-how-political-elites-and-global-offshore-oil-development-moved-asian-marine-spaces-into-the-new-epoch/011BB14EDB57766CC0040C60C7239F27

Abstract:
The Anthropocene epoch, characterized by human-caused planetary-scale transformations like climate change and ocean acidification, today is usually associated with the period beginning in the mid-twentieth century. Taking an oceanic perspective on the Anthropocene in Asia, the article argues that oceanic and terrestrial energy regimes synchronized since the 1950s when, for the first time in history, oceanic ghost acres turned marine spaces into a major fuel source. Despite global connections between offshore oil regions located in North America, Asia, and other places going back to the late nineteenth century, Asia’s contingent offshore oil field locations and physical geography, combined with political factors, inhibited large-scale offshore drilling before the 1950s. These characteristics of marine spaces meant that Asian political elites and their developmentalist agendas became the guiding force in exploring offshore fields, a process that was hardly dominated by corporate capitalism or structural choice limitations due to the legacy of colonialism.

This article presents an optimization-based approach for sizing and composition of an Arctic offshore drilling support fleet considering cost-efficiency. The approach studies the main types of duties related to Arctic offshore drillings: supply, towing, anchor handling, standby, oil spill response, firefighting, and ice management. The approach considers the combined effect of the expected costs of accidental events, the versatility of individual support vessels, and ice management. The approach applies an Artificial Bee Colony algorithm-based optimization procedure. As demonstrated through case studies, the approach may help to find a range of cost-efficient fleet compositions. Some of the obtained solutions are similar to corresponding real-life fleets, indicating that the approach works in principle. Sensitivity analyses indicate that the consideration of the expected costs from accidental events significantly impacts the obtained solution, and that investments to reduce these costs may improve the overall cost-efficiency of an Arctic offshore drilling support fleet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O864bU81RfI

In this video I talk about the central role of Asian states and Asian political elites in encouraging offshore oil drilling in Asia. Offshore oil drilling is important when thinking about the role of the ocean in human history and also in terms of climate change, since after millennia of energy generation onshore, marine regions during the 20th century suddenly turned into suppliers of large amounts of energy. Oceanic and terrestrial energy transitions toward oil therefore began to synchronize, or to take place about the same time. Western and transnational corporate capitalism played a minor role in all that, as did the legacies of Western and Japanese imperialism in Asia. In the case of offshore oil drilling in Asia, Asian political elites therefore were the driving force for (unintentionally) causing climate change, sea level rise, and other problems that define the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene means a new epoch in human history, beginning in the mid-20th century, when humans (states, groups, individuals) became a geological force and able to change planetary-scale processes, such as the climate. I see this important role of Asian political elites as a challenge to problematic claims of other “-cenes” (capitaloscene, plantationocene, etc.) that easily overlook communist contributions to climate change, have a quite narrow focus on Western economic elites and corporate capitalism, or overestimate the impacts of imperialism. In Asia, offshore oil drilling largely emerged after WWII, since physical geographies and locations of offshore oil fields were less accessible than in the United States’ Mississippi Delta during the 1920s and 1930s. In contrast to terrestrial oil fields, offshore oil fields usually were located in yet unclaimed waters, which contributed to a large-scale territorial expansion of states since the mid-20th century.

0:00 Offshore oil, climate change, Asian Anthropocene
2:43 Central role of Asian political elites 4:37 Oceanic energy transition and oil
5:35 Origins of offshore oil drilling in Japan and California
7:56 Tech advances: Louisiana's bayous, but much less in Asia
12:38 Japanese political elites after WWII
15:02 Saudi and Kuwaiti elites (and Japan)
17:42 Indonesian political elites
18:50 Senkaku/Diaoyu islands conflict
20:44 Future of Asian Anthropocene and marine industrialization (solar, wind power)

FOR CITATIONS:
SALEM, H.S. Computer modeling of porosity and lithology for complex reservoirs using well-log measurements.
Energy Sources: Part A: Recovery, Utilization and Environmental Effects. 2000, Volume 22, Issue 6, Pages: 515-524 (10 p).
Taylor & Francis (Publisher). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00908310050013749#.UxcenT-Sy-k

ABSTRACT:
The high degree of heterogeneity, saturation of multiphase fluids, and presence of clays in complex reservoirs make each of the three porosity logs (sonic, density, and neutron), if used independently, generally record inaccurate porosity. For such
reservoirs, combining different logs gives accurate results of porosity. The reservoirs of Terra Nova and Hibernia (Jeanne d’Arc Basin), offshore of the eastern coast of Canada, are saturated with multiphase fluids, enriched with clays, and made of
compacted and heterogeneous rocks, in terms of the lithological and mineralogical composition, and the size and shape of the grains and pores. In this study, the porosity and the rock constituents were determined for both reservoirs using a
computer technique in which the iteration process was applied. That was done by developing and using various computer programs and models, and utilizing numerous data from several logs analyzed at 0.2-m sampling-depth intervals. The more the
number of logs and iterations used in computation, the higher the degree of accuracy of results obtained. The reservoirs are made of shalestone, sandstone, siltstone, limestone, marlstone, and conglomerate. The porosity varies widely, because of variations in the rock composition and overburden pressure. The modeled porosity was compared to the porosity measured by the compensated neutron log (CNL). The results indicate that the CNL-m easured porosity is generally higher than the modeled
porosity by about 50%. The CNL-m easurements are greatly affected by the high amount of hydrogen that is chemically bound in the shales, hydrocarbons, and water. Therefore, CNL records higher values of porosity when porosity is actually
low, and lower values of porosity when it is actually high.

Hacia fines de 2002, Argentina comenzó un ciclo de crecimiento económico que rápidamente evidenció las limitaciones de la producción doméstica de hidrocarburos para garantizar el abastecimiento interno de energía. Tal situación se explicaba, prima facie, por la relativa madurez de los yacimientos onshore explotados a lo largo del siglo XX. Como respuesta, durante los primeros años de la postconvertibilidad, la intervención estatal articuló un conjunto de medidas orientadas a promover el desarrollo de la extracción de petróleo y gas en el mar territorial y la plataforma continental. El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar el diseño y la implementación de estas políticas entre los años 2002 y 2011. Apelamos a una estrategia metodológica mixta que triangula distintas técnicas de recolección y análisis de datos de fuentes primarias y secundarias. Entre sus resultados, el trabajo muestra los límites de la intervención estatal frente al legado de las reformas neoliberales y las demandas de los capitales petroleros.
---
By the end of 2002, Argentina began a remarkable cycle of recovery and subsequent economic growth. Given the maturity of conventional onshore fields exploited throughout the XX century, it soon became evident that domestic hydrocarbons production would face severe difficulties to guarantee the internal energy supply. As a response, during the first years of the “postconvertibility” regime, State intervention promoted offshore exploration and drilling in the continental margin. This article analyses the public policies designed and implemented to that end between the years 2002 and 2011. We have appealed to a mixed methodological strategy which triangulated different data collection and analysis techniques from primary and secondary sources. Among its results, the paper shows the limits of State intervention against the neoliberal legacy and the demands of oil companies.

Part 2 of a 3-part series about "Oil and Genre" in popular film and television.
Translated into French by Isabelle Chelley with English original text below.

Pétrole et cinéma de genre : Hollywood, catastrophes et Deepwater Horizon

Deuxième partie d'une série de trois articles qui s'attardent sur la place et la représentation du pétrole, de son industrie et de ses implications dans le cinéma et les séries. Traduits avec grâce et précision par Isabelle Chelley.

The author aims to present the broadest possible context of the Baltic Pipe project, including legal, and to some extent, economic considerations, which ought to be scrutinized along with the broader geopolitical considerations surrounding present energy-related race in Baltic Sea. The aim is to juxtapose the long-lasting Russo-German strategic partnership resting on the development of Nord Stream(s) pipeline surpassing Poland on the one side, with a collection of pipe-dream moves ushered by Washington and aimed at upending this partnership, the Baltic Pipe project included, on the other side. Sec 2 looks at the Nord Stream(s) project as the direct competitor of the Baltic Pipe, and at the efforts by both the US government and the EU institutions to undermine Russo-German co-operation, thereby helping the viability of the Baltic Pipe. The discussion of the Nord Stream(s) covers US’ attempts to torpedo the Nord Stream 2 with sanctions imposed in December 2019 (sec 2.1) and the EU’s crusade against the Nord Stream via blocking the full capacity use of the OPAL pipeline since 2009 (sec 2.2). Sec 3 looks at the US’s and Germany’s energy strategies toward the CEE, including the energy dimension of the US-led Three Seas Initiative (sec 3.1), which favour the Baltic Pipe project, and Germany’s Energiewende which is at odds with this project (sec 3.2). Secs 4 and 5 look at drivers for advancing the Baltic Pipe, which stem from the structure Poland’s electricity-generation market (sec 4) combined with Poland’s EU and international climate and emissions-related commitments (sec 5), which all force a country-wide shift to electricity-generation from natural gas. Section 6 looks at the Yamal Contract, which will secure gas supplies to Poland until it tentatively expires in 2022, and those supplies are entirely replaced with gas supplied via the Baltic Pipe. Finally, sec 7 looks at the regulatory issues, including the intergovernmental agreement on the Baltic Pipe (sec 7.1), funding of the project along with granted state aid (sec 7.2), and the permitting process (sec 7.3).

The unequal bargaining power of the parties in the oil and gas industry has lead to the imbalanced contractual risk allocation in oilfield contracts in Malaysia. In this regard, there is a prospect that the operators pass an unfair share of the risks on to the contractors. However, the contractors might still enter into such imbalanced agreement to secure a job and thereby assume these risks. In this paper, it is argued that a statutory controlling mechanism, such as Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA) in the UK, should be adopted to protect the liability of the contractor in relation to the risk allocation provisions of oilfield contracts in Malaysia. This paper seeks to analyse the deficiencies of the risk allocation provisions of oilfield contracts in Malaysia and to consider whether the principle of reasonableness test as provided in UCTA could provide a potential solution. It will employ a combination of case study and analysis.

This paper reviews cost estimates for decommissioning and fully removing the 23 oil and gas platforms located on the federal Outer Continental Shelf offshore California and estimates the costs that could be avoided (saved) if the platform jackets are partially removed and reefed in-situ rather than fully removed. The cost savings are calculated by estimating the weight of the jacket structure that would remain in-situ and multiplying that weight by a demolition cost ranging from $3,000 to $7,000/ton (short tons) for structure removal. This cost range was derived from a review of published information on estimated and actual jacket removal costs. The calculations show that if all 23 platform jackets are reefed in-situ the estimated total cost savings achieved would range from $856 million to $2.0 billion. On a per platform basis, the cost savings range from a low of $0.3 million for Platform Gina (84 tons remaining in-situ) to a high of $494 million for Platform Harmony (70,540 tons remaining in-situ). Under the California Marine Resources Legacy Act (AB 2503) the owners of oil and gas platforms who obtain approval to reef a platform jacket are required to share 65% to 80% of the cost savings with the State of California. Based on the cost savings estimates presented in this paper, the State of California would receive an allotment ranging from a low of $685 million to as much as $1.6 billion if all 23 OCS platforms were approved to be reefed in-situ.