Oil Rigs

Tropical storm Beryl, the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, hugged the Louisiana coast today, forcing evacuations from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm's center was about 50 miles southeast of New Orleans. Beryl was upgraded today from a tropical depression after its winds strengthened, reaching close to 45 m.p.h. with gusts up to 55 m.p.h. The storm strengthened as it drifted closer to the warm Gulf waters.

Lifeboats from an oil rig that was temporarily grounded on a small island in southern Alaska may have leaked as much as 272 gallons of diesel fuel into pristine waters along the shoreline, but that cannot be determined until a full inspection is completed, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. A preliminary assessment of four survival boats and one rescue boat at Sitkalidak Island, near Kodiak Island, where the Kulluk rig became stuck along the rocky shore, has revealed that some fuel tanks on the smaller boats were damaged, incident commanders said in a statement late Wednesday.

If there is solidarity within this diverse state on a single environmental issue, it is on drilling for oil in our coastal waters. After California's monumental drilling wars of the 1970s and '80s, the matter seemed to be settled. There would be no new oil rigs along the coast. Sacramento banned any further drilling within its jurisdiction, up to three miles from the shoreline.

SEATTLE -- An Arctic drilling rig beached for several days on a remote, rocky shore in southern Alaska was refloated early Monday and towed toward safe harbor in a sheltered bay on Kodiak Island. The Kulluk, which ran aground New Year's Eve after it broke free of its tow lines during severe weather, was hooked up to new lines and hoisted off the rocks toward safety during a high tide. Officials with the U.S. Coast Guard and Shell Alaska, which operated the rig during offshore oil operations this summer, were taking the vessel to a location in Kiliuda Bay, where it could be carefully inspected for damage.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

Six men were rescued from the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, 11 hours after the floating drilling rig on which they worked overturned as it was being moved back to shore.

Offshore oil rigs, which averaged 570 last year, will decline to about 415 this year because of dwindling oil prices, Pennzoil President Richard J. Howe predicted. The rig count also will "bump along" at 400 for several years and not return to the boom levels of the early 1980s until 1995, he said. Pennzoil has trimmed its offshore drilling rigs to just two--one in the Gulf of Mexico's Mobile Bay and another in the Dutch North Sea.

Warren Arnold Howser, a 43-year resident of Ventura County who built oil rigs for Shell Oil Co., died Friday in a Los Angeles veteran's hospital after a long illness. He was 77. Howser was born April 2, 1920, in Long Lane, Mo. He served in the Army during World War II. After the war, Howser went to work for Shell Oil. He moved from Long Beach to Ventura in 1955 and retired in 1979.

Kaiser and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers said they filed complaints accusing South Korea of selling offshore oil platforms in the United States below their fair value. The complaints filed in Washington with the federal International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department contend that the Korean government is subsidizing the export of the drilling rigs. Such action, known as "dumping," is illegal under U.S. law.

The number of working oil and gas rigs in the United States dipped by 27 this week, or about 3%, to 899, industry watcher Baker Hughes Inc. reported Monday. During the previous week, the company said the rig count had increased by five to total 926. But this week, Oklahoma reported 18 fewer working rigs and Mississippi, hampered by rains that bogged production efforts, reported 10 fewer rigs, according to Ike Kerridge, an economist with Baker Hughes. Louisiana dropped by seven.

A week after the Shell oil barge Kulluk hit shore near Kodiak Island, Alaska, officials are waiting on the weather to attempt a high-stakes rescue. The Kulluk, a 266-foot barge fresh off its inaugural drilling expedition in the Arctic, broke free from its tow lines in rough weather and hit the rocky shore on Sitkalidak Island hours before Alaskans rang in the New Year. The Kulluk remained grounded there Sunday, along with its 150,000 gallons of diesel and roughly 12,000 gallons of lube oil and hydraulic fluid, as Shell and Coast Guard officials made preparations to tow the barge 30 miles to safe harbor in Kiliuda Bay, Alaska.

SEATTLE - A salvage team was able to board the stranded Kulluk oil rig where it remained beached Wednesday on a remote Alaska shoreline, and authorities said there was still no evidence of fuel leakage into the churning surf. But questions remained about whether the fuel tanks aboard the vessel were completely undamaged, Coast Guard Capt. Paul Mehler, the federal response commander, said at a briefing Wednesday night. Authorities are primarily worried that fuel stored on board the vessel could leak and endanger the abundant wildlife that populates that part of the Gulf of Alaska - only a few hundred miles from where the Exxon Valdez leaked a tanker full of oil into Prince William Sound in 1989 and devastated fisheries for years.

Coast Guard emergency teams continue to wait and watch a grounded oil rig in southern Alaska on Wednesday morning for signs of leakage. Stormy weather is delaying efforts to get people onto the Kulluk rig to make a closer assessment. Meanwhile, a "full-scale" response operation is being marshaled -- just in case. "There's no sign of any leakage," Coast Guard spokesman Sam Sacco told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.  "Just as a contingency, a full-scale response operation is being put in place, but the fact is, there is no leakage of chemicals into the water.

An offshore drilling rig remained beached on a remote island in southern Alaska Tuesday, but authorities said there was as yet no evidence that it had leaked any of the more than 150,000 gallons of fuel and other petroleum products on board into the pristine waters nearby. “Right now … the Kulluk [rig] is sound. There is no sign of a breach of the hull; there is no sign of release of any product,” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Paul Mehler, the federal on-scene commander for what is becoming a major response effort, said at a news conference.

Two workers on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico were still missing Saturday, following an explosion on the site a day earlier that injured nine other people. The U.S. Coast Guard was searching a 1,400-square-mile area of ocean Saturday around a Black Elk Energy rig that burst into flames Friday when oil caught fire as workers cut through a pipe. The platform is off the Louisiana shore, about 20 miles southeast of Grand Isle. The rig had been shut down since mid-August, company officials said, leaving authorities little concern about an oil spill.

British oil giant BP can easily afford to pay the $4.5 billion in oil-spill settlement costs announced Thursday, but analysts said a more difficult task may be rebuilding its reputation. BP agreed to the fines and other payments to the federal government and others and pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts related to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers in April 2010. It also agreed to a misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, a misdemeanor count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and a felony count of obstruction of Congress.

Re "Bush Hears Local Voices--When It Suits His Agenda," Commentary, Jan. 16: John Balzar rightly illuminates the president's double standard on states' rights but uses the issue too much as an attack against President Bush without emphasizing the damage these oil rigs will cause. Although I am a Democrat, it should be noted that development on these leases first occurred in 1999 during President Clinton's term. In June, with the support of Californian environmental groups like CalPIRG, the state of California won its court case against the federal government mandating that California must be consulted about any new rigs built off its shores.

The number of working oil and gas rigs rose this week by eight to 797 after four straight weeks of declines, industry watcher Baker Hughes Inc. reported. Last week the count dropped by 51 and the previous three weeks the count declined twice by 32 and once by 36, all after a two-week increase of 25 rigs. Last week the rig count totaled 789. A year ago, the number of rigs totaled 964, Baker Hughes said today.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

As hopes faded Tuesday for the rescue of 39 workers still missing after an oil rig capsized in a fierce winter storm off the east coast of Russia, the wife of one of the men called the towing of the platform through icy waters a suicide mission. The multi-ton Kolskaya oil and gas drilling platform sank Sunday in the Sea of Okhotsk about 146 miles off Sakhalin Island while being towed to its new destination in Vietnam. Fourteen crew members were rescued and 14 were found dead Sunday, officials said.