Transocean

The road crashes through the jungle like the fevered dream of the indomitable Fitzcarraldo, who schemes to transport a steamship overland through the Peruvian tropics in a cult film celebrating demented ambition. The Transoceanic Highway, evoking engineering marvels such as the Transcontinental Railroad and the Panama Canal, has been talked about for decades, assuming a mythic stature that has led many to question whether the east-west thoroughfare linking Brazil's Atlantic ports with the Pacific docks of Peru would ever come to pass.

Transocean Deepwater Inc., an oil drilling company, formally pleaded guilty on Thursday to a misdemeanor charge and will pay $400 million in criminal penalties, the latest action in the 2010 Gulf oil spill. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo in New Orleans accepted the guilty plea to violating the Clean Water Act plea and imposed sentence, the Justice Department announced Thursday. Transocean agreed last month to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge and to pay $1 billion in civil penalties along with the criminal penalty.

Many hostages on Saturday left four offshore oil rigs where striking workers had held 267 of them captive for weeks, signaling a peaceful end to the standoff. Some essential staff would remain on the drilling platforms but "everyone else, they are departing in phases," said Guy Cantwell, spokesman for rig owner Transocean Inc., which is based in Houston. The evacuation "is continuing and we are going to do it as quickly as we can," he said.

Two cheers, one for Jerry Hulse's travel checklist (Tips, Sept. 28)--so sensible, so rare, though he should have added a sleep shade, a mask for the eyes. I did a lot of transocean flying, at night, and flying east that sun comes up awfully early. And one for the delightful story on the Lisbon Express (Sept. 28). I rode the airplanes for convenience and the trains for pleasure, and read everything about train travel that comes to my attention, including of course Paul Theroux's two fine books.

Offshore oil and gas driller Pride International Inc. said it plans to acquire Marine Drilling Cos., but Pride's stock fell sharply on the news, slashing the value of the all-stock deal to around $1.6 billion. Under plans approved by directors of both companies, stockholders of each company will receive one share in a newly formed company for each Pride or Marine Drilling share they own.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico was built in South Korea. It was operated by a Swiss company under contract to a British oil firm. Primary responsibility for safety and other inspections rested not with the U.S. government but with the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean. And the Marshall Islands, a maze of tiny atolls, many smaller than the ill-fated oil rig, outsourced many of its responsibilities to private companies.

Militant youths released dozens of oil workers--including at least eight foreigners--after holding them hostage for nearly four days on a drilling rig off the coast of West Africa, Shell Oil said. The hostages, who were seized Thursday night, were unharmed, said Bisi Ojeidiran, a spokesman for Shell's joint venture with the Nigerian government.

Nabors Industries Inc. shareholders approved a plan to incorporate in Bermuda to reduce taxes after a federal judge denied a request for a restraining order to block the vote. The world's largest onshore oil- and gas-well drilling company said investors holding 83% of the 111.6 million votes cast approved the move. Houston-based Nabors seeks to join rivals such as GlobalSantaFe Corp. and Transocean Inc., which incorporated abroad in 1999 to lower their taxes.

Federal investigators painted a picture Thursday that suggested BP and oil-rig owner Transocean cut corners aboard the doomed Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Investigators have suggested that crew members were under pressure to finish their work aboard the floating mobile oil rig, which was trying to finish off an exploratory well, plug it so a production rig could be put into place and move on to a new site.