Gulf Of Mexico

A Chinese company's gambit to drill for oil in U.S. territory demonstrates China's determination to lock up the raw materials it needs to sustain its rapid growth, wherever those resources lie. The state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, reportedly is negotiating the purchase of leases owned by the Norwegian StatoilHydro in U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the source of about a quarter of U.S. crude oil production. China's push to enter U.S. turf comes four years after CNOOC's $18.5-billion bid to buy Unocal Corp.

Tea parties aren't the only place you'll hear grumbling these days about the imposition of a "nanny state." Just take a seat in any Louisiana oyster bar. On a recent weeknight, Paul Stahls had just polished off a plate of raw oysters on the half-shell at Casamento's Restaurant, one of New Orleans' beloved seafood joints. He worried whether this culinary experience, so deeply ingrained in Louisiana culture, might be threatened by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration crackdown. "Are you truly going to tell me that I can't have a raw oyster?"

At least three dozen young sea turtles are getting a little vacation under heat lamps after being rescued from an arctic blast that caused the water temperature in an arm of the Gulf of Mexico to plummet 18 degrees in 48 hours. The turtles were left comatose by the rapid temperature drop this week in the shallow bay where they feed. Rescuers feared the cold would kill the turtles or make them too sluggish to avoid sharks.

An unusually large number of dead bottlenose dolphins have washed ashore near this Gulf of Mexico city in the last month, and investigators are looking at laboratory slides, satellite photos and anything else they can think of in their search for clues. About 180 dolphins are stranded in Texas each year, many from January through March -- their calving season, when infants may die during birth or become separated from their mothers and are unable to survive alone.

The Bush administration moved Monday to open the Virginia coast to oil drilling, a step that environmentalists warned could lead to the weakening of the long-standing ban on new energy exploration off much of the U.S. coast. That ban was inspired by a devastating oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969. But high gas prices and concern about U.S. dependence on foreign oil have made pro-drilling forces more hopeful of persuading Congress, even with its Democratic majority, to relax the drilling ban.

Fresh water pouring into the Gulf of Mexico after weeks of flooding in the state has created an oxygen-depleted "dead zone" that threatens sea life, a researcher said. Steve DiMarco, a professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University, said freshwater runoff from the swollen Brazos River left a 1,750-square-mile area hypoxic, or depleted of oxygen. Sea life is threatened as far as 35 miles offshore.

Retail gasoline prices declined again in California and nationally over the last week and crude oil futures did the same Monday as the one force with the power to raise them -- Hurricane Dean -- blew toward Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, far south of U.S. oil rigs and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico. "Disorganized shower activity" was all that the U.S. Gulf Coast area was expected to suffer, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Monday.

The highway along the Mississippi Gulf Coast would be forlorn if not for the casinos, which are having their best year ever. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has proven to be little more than a temporary setback to the conversion of formerly sleepy beachfront communities into the Las Vegas of the Deep South. Although affordable housing is scarce and businesses have trouble getting insurance coverage to rebuild since the storm, 11 casinos are open in Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St.

After more than half a century of wartime valor, maritime tragedy and cinematic triumph, the aircraft carrier Oriskany is preparing for its final mission: sinking into an afterlife as an artificial reef. But being transformed into an attraction for anglers and divers in the Gulf of Mexico is proving one of the more challenging assignments for the storied and long-retired ship.

Output at Mexico's most important oil field has fallen steeply this year, raising fears that wells there that generate 60% of the country's petroleum are in the throes of a major decline. Production at Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, in the shallow gulf waters off the shore of Mexico's southern Campeche state, averaged just over 1.8 million barrels a day in May, according to the most recent government figures.