The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) will hold the first oil and natural gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. This sale follows BOEMRE’s completion of a supplemental environmental impact statement analyzing the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on the Western Gulf of Mexico. Lease Sale 218 will be held in the Louisiana Superdome in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 14, 2011. The sale will include all available unleased areas in the Western Gulf Planning Area offshore Texas.

Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling, Inc. (TODDI) has filed a motion for summary judgment in the U.S. Eastern District Court in Louisiana requesting the court to force BP to honor its contractual obligation to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Transocean for damages associated with BP’s failure to contain flow from its Macondo well in 2010. Transocean says BP has refused to honor its contractual obligations despite what Transocean says is the industry-standard reciprocal indemnity provisions contained in the drilling contract. The original contract was signed in 1998 and extended several times up to and including in 2009. Language in the contract says BP will “defend, release, protect, indemnify and hold harmless” Transocean for any and all fines, penalties and damages associated with environmental pollution originating from the well “without limit and without regard to the cause or causes” including negligence, “whether such negligence be sole, joint, active, passive or gross.” The motion also asserts that after months of discovery and over 200 witness dispositions, it was clear that no evidence of gross negligence by Transocean existed. BP filed suit against Transocean on the one-year anniversary of the incident, alleging that Transocean personnel had willful and callous disregard for the welfare of ...

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement/U.S. Coast Guard joint investigation team has released its final investigative report on the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon explosion, loss of life, and resulting oil spill. The full report, divided into two volumes and accompanying appendices, can be downloaded from the agency’s website at www.boemre.gov.

Royal Dutch Shell, PLC has awarded Tyco International, Ltd.’s flow control unit an enterprise framework agreement to provide butterfly valves to Shell globally. The five-year agreement covers more than 2,500 of Tyco’s highly engineered butterfly valves for use in projects, maintenance repair operations, and turnaround applications.

 

Halliburton filed claims against BP, PLC in Texas state court last week for negligent misrepresentation, business disparagement, and defamation related to the April 20, 2010, Macondo rig disaster and subsequent oil spill. Halliburton has also moved to amend its claims against BP in the multi-district litigation in New Orleans, Louisiana, to include fraud.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) will hold the first oil and natural gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. The proposed Western Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 218 is scheduled to be held in New Orleans on December 14, 2011. The sale will include all available unleased areas in the Western Gulf Planning Area offshore Texas, encompassing about 3,900 unleased blocks covering approximately 20.6 million acres. The blocks are located in water depths ranging from 16 ft to more than 10,975 ft. BOEMRE estimates the proposed lease sale could result in the production of 222–423 million barrels of oil and 1.49-2.65 trillion cubic ft of natural gas.

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) reported it has issued 67 new shallow water well permits since new standards were put in place during June 2010. Permits have averaged more than six per month over the past eight months. In addition, the agency has approved deepwater permits for 26 unique wells since mid-February, with 19 permits pending, and 26 permits returned to operators requiring additional information.

 

BP has exercised its six-month option on the contract of Transocean drillship Discoverer Enterprise, and the operator further agreed to an additional one-year extension for the rig. The six-month extension, which keeps the day rate at $435,000, will begin August 1, 2012, with the one-year term beginning January 2012 at a rate of $492,000. The rig, which recently underwent a deep cleaning and decontamination process after completing work at the Macondo oil spill site in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, is currently on standby for BP in Grand Isle Block 61.

 

Diamond Offshore semi Ocean Saratoga has completed its sublet contract for Nexen Petroleum in Green Canyon Block 50. The rig’s contract with Taylor Energy is now completed and the rig ...