industryterm:oil development

  • Vietnam halts South China Sea oil drilling project under pressure from Beijing
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-vietnam/vietnam-scraps-south-china-sea-oil-drilling-project-under-pressure-from-bei


    le bloc 07/03 dans le bassin de Nam Con Son

    Vietnam has halted an oil drilling project in the “Red Emperor” block off its southeastern coast licensed to Spanish energy firm #Repsol following pressure from China, three sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters on Friday.

    It would be the second time in less than a year that Vietnam has had to suspend a major oil development in the busy #South_China_Sea waterway under pressure from China.
    […]
    #Red_Emperor, known in Vietnamese as the #Ca_Rong_Do field, is part of Block 07/03 in the #Nam_Con_Son basin, 440 km (273 miles) off the coast of Vietnam’s southern city of Vung Tau.

    The $1-billion field of moderate size by international standards is seen as a key asset to help slow the decline of Vietnam’s stalling oil and gas production.

    But the block lies near the U-shaped “#nine-dash_line ” that marks the vast area that China claims in the sea and overlaps what it says are its own oil concessions.

    Located in waters around 350 metres (1,148 ft) deep, it is considered to be profitable from around $60 per barrel. Current Brent crude oil prices are almost $70 per barrel.

    On est très très bas, dans la #mer_de_Chine_méridionale, mais trop proche de la #ligne_en_neuf_traits

    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_en_neuf_traits
    #langue_de_bœuf #Đường_lưỡi_bò

    #Cá_Rồng_Đỏ
    cf. https://seenthis.net/messages/617802 (avec autre carte)

  • Canada Rules Out Arctic Oil Drilling Extensions for Exxon and BP - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-06/canada-rules-out-arctic-oil-drilling-extensions-for-exxon-and-bp

    The Canadian government says it won’t grant extensions to exploration licenses for Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and other oil firms as it prepares for consultations over the impact of an Arctic drilling moratorium.

    The companies hold leases that expire over the next six years, totaling C$1.9 billion ($1.4 billion) in bids. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama announced new restrictions on Arctic oil development on Dec. 20, with Canada saying existing leases wouldn’t be affected without industry input on a path forward.

    In an online background document, however, Trudeau’s government specifically ruled out lease extensions sought by industry before the new restrictions were put in place. Companies had expected that to be a central part of talks.

  • Obama Said to Block Selling New Drilling Rights in U.S. Arctic - Bloomberg Politics
    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-16/obama-said-to-block-selling-new-drilling-rights-in-u-s-arctic-ivl28guc

    The Obama administration is set to block the sale of new oil and gas drilling rights in U.S. Arctic waters under a five-year blueprint, handing a victory to environmentalists who said the activity threatened whales, walruses and other wildlife in the region.

    The details were confirmed by people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly before it is issued, something that is expected within days. It is subject to a 60-day congressional review and could be rewritten by President-elect Donald Trump, in a process that could take months or years.

    Because the Interior Department had already removed Atlantic waters from consideration, the decision to leave out the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska largely limits new drilling lease auctions between 2017 and 2022 to the Gulf of Mexico. The fate of a proposed sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet could not be learned.

    The move is a blow to oil companies that have pressed the Obama administration to open up more areas for offshore drilling, arguing new territory is needed to build on decades of energy development in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil companies had largely abandoned existing tracts in the Chukchi Sea, after Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s 2015 drilling campaign there did not yield a commercial discovery.

    Environmental activists have pressed President Barack Obama to go further and use a provision in a 1953 law to permanently restrict oil development in U.S. Atlantic and Arctic waters.

    #Mer_des_Tchouktches #Mer_de_Beaufort #Alaska
    #Arctique #forages_pétroliers

  • Is #Canada Tarring Itself ? - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/opinion/is-canada-tarring-itself.html?hp&rref=opinion

    START with the term “tar sands.” In Canada only fervent opponents of oil development in northern Alberta dare to use those words; the preferred phrase is the more reassuring “oil sands.” Never mind that the “oil” in the world’s third largest petroleum reserve is in fact bitumen, a substance with the consistency of peanut butter, so viscous that another fossil fuel must be used to dilute it enough to make it flow.

    Never mind, too, that the process that turns bitumen into consumable oil is very dirty, even by the oil industry’s standards. But say “tar sands” in Canada, and you’ll risk being labeled unpatriotic, radical, subversive.

    Performing language makeovers is perhaps the most innocuous indication of the Canadian government’s headlong embrace of the oil industry’s wishes. Soon after becoming prime minister in 2006, Stephen Harper declared Canada “an emerging energy superpower,” and nearly everything he’s done since has buttressed this ambition. Forget the idea of Canada as dull, responsible and environmentally minded: That is so 20th century. Now it’s a desperado, placing all its chips on a world-be-damned, climate-altering tar sands bet.

    Documents obtained by research institutions and environmental groups through freedom-of-information requests show a government bent on extracting as much tar sands oil as possible, as quickly as possible. From 2008 to 2012, oil industry representatives registered 2,733 communications with government officials, a number dwarfing those of other industries. The oil industry used these communications to recommend changes in legislation to facilitate tar sands and pipeline development. In the vast majority of instances, the government followed through.

    After winning an outright parliamentary majority in 2011, Mr. Harper’s Conservative Party passed an omnibus bill that revoked or weakened 70 environmental laws, including protections for rivers and fisheries. As a result, one proposed pipeline, the Northern Gateway, which crosses a thousand rivers and streams between Alberta and the Pacific, no longer risked violating the law. The changes also eliminated federal environmental review requirements for thousands of proposed development projects.

    (...)

    Climate change’s impact on Canada is already substantial. Across Canada’s western prairie provinces, an area larger than Alaska, mean temperatures have risen several degrees over the last 40 years, causing releases of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost and drying wetlands. The higher temperatures have led to the spread of the mountain pine beetle, which has consumed millions of trees. The trees, in turn, have become fodder for increasingly extensive forest fires, which release still more greenhouse gases. Given that scientists now think the Northern Hemisphere’s boreal forests retain far more carbon than tropical rain forests like the Amazon, these developments are ominous. At least the Harper government has indirectly acknowledged climate change in one way: It has made a show of defending the Northwest Passage, an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that winds through Canadian territory.

    Nevertheless, the Harper government has shown its disdain for scientists and environmental groups dealing with climate change and industrial pollution. The government has either drastically cut or entirely eliminated funding for many facilities conducting research in climate change and air and water pollution. It has placed tight restrictions on when its 23,000 scientists may speak publicly and has given power to some department managers to block publication of peer-reviewed research. It has closed or “consolidated” scientific libraries, sometimes thoughtlessly destroying invaluable collections in the process. And it has slashed funding for basic research, shifting allocations to applied research with potential payoffs for private companies.

    With a deft Orwellian touch, Canada’s national health agency even accused a doctor in Alberta, John O’Connor, of professional misconduct — raising “undue alarm” and promoting “a sense of mistrust” in government officials — after he reported in 2006 that an unusually high number of rare, apparently tar-sands-related cancers were showing up among residents of Fort Chipewyan, 150 miles downstream from the tar sands. A government review released in 2009 cautiously supported Dr. O’Connor’s claims, but officials have shown no interest in the residents’ health since then.

    Dr. O’Connor’s experience intimidated other doctors, according to Margaret Sears, a toxicologist hired by the quasi-independent Alberta Energy Regulator to study health impacts in another region near the tar sands operation. Dr. Sears reported that some doctors cited Dr. O’Connor’s case as a reason for declining to treat patients who suggested a link between their symptoms and tar sands emissions.

    The pressure on environmentalists has been even more intense. Two years ago Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (who this month became finance minister) declared that some environmentalists “use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest” and “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” Canada’s National Energy Board, an ostensibly independent regulatory agency, coordinated with the nation’s intelligence service, police and oil companies to spy on environmentalists. And Canada’s tax-collecting agency recently introduced rigorous audits of at least seven prominent environmental groups, diverting the groups’ already strained resources from anti-tar-sands activities.

    #sables_bitumineux #langage #Harper #climat #argent #guerre_contre_la_science #abus_de_pouvoir