Impact of Recent Incidents in the Gulf of Mexico
In response to the ongoing spill in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GoM), the Obama Administration announced a six-month drilling moratorium and new restrictions to licensing activities on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS):
- No new drilling will be allowed in water depths greater than 152 metres (500 feet) for six months, including sidetracks and bypasses of currently-drilling wells.
- Drilling on 33 wells will be suspended at the first safe stopping point.
- Workover activities, well completions, abandonment activities, interventions, and waterflood, gas injection, and disposal wells will not be affected.
- Drilling offshore Alaska will be postponed until at least 2011.
- Western GoM Lease Sale 215 and the proposed Virginia Lease Sale 220 have been cancelled.
- The three other remaining GoM lease sales in the 2007 – 2012 OCS Leasing Programme are subject to review.
- New standards for equipment and procedures will be implemented, with a focus on blowout preventers (BOPs), well control systems (fluid displacement procedures), casing and cementing.
We have studied in-depth which projects and companies will be most affected. Additionally, we have analysed company rig contracts and operations in other deepwater basins to determine which areas rigs could potentially be relocated to, and published this analysis in our Upstream Insights service.*
If you are not a client of this service and would like to buy a copy of the report analysing the effects of the moratorium and the potential impact of tighter regulation and new practices, please click on the link below.
Purchase the Report: Moratorium halts US deepwater drilling for six months
* If you are a client of the Upstream Service, Exploration Service, Macro Oils Service or Corporate Service, you will have received a similar report.
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