U.S./Canada ///
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) today announced it will offer approximately 1.09 million acres off Alaska’s southcentral coast in a lease sale scheduled for June 21.
Here at the top of the world, January brought a glimpse of the anxious future facing Alaska’s once-mighty oil pipeline.
As President Trump’s administration continues to settle in, energy industry constituents in Alaska and Texas are watching closely, in hopes that the new staff will move forward with a common-sense regulatory approach, when it comes to E&P activities.
The Canadian government says it won’t grant extensions to exploration licenses for Exxon Mobil, BP and other oil firms as it prepares for consultations over the impact of an Arctic drilling moratorium.
Energy firms including Imperial Oil and BP will get a year of consultations to hash out the fate of their rights in Canada’s Arctic after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s drilling freeze set the stage for a dispute over license extensions.
President Barack Obama is preparing to block the sale of new offshore drilling rights in much of the U.S. Arctic and parts of the Atlantic, a move that could indefinitely restrict oil production there, according to two people familiar with the decision.
Obama Administration officials and former leaders of U.S. Armed Forces expressed support for Arctic oil and gas development at an Atlantic Council event on Geopolitics, Security, and Energy in the Arctic, sponsored by the Arctic Energy Center, yesterday afternoon.
Roger Jordan, World Oil
It isn’t just about oil
Energy companies that hunt for crude in icy Arctic waters will have to stash extra equipment nearby and take other potentially costly steps meant to prevent oil spills in the fragile, remote region under regulations the Obama administration imposed Thursday.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has underscored the criticality of oil and gas production in the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to Alaska and the entire nation.
On the eve of the conclusion of the Department of the Interior’s public consultation on its proposed Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022, a group of foreign policy and national security leaders have submitted formal comments for the record in support of retaining the two Arctic leasing areas in the final program.
Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives encouraging the Department of the Interior to advance its plan to sell two leases for energy development in the Arctic.
Environmental activists who dangled from bridges and paddled kayaks around an Arctic rig have a new strategy for stopping oil development off U.S. coasts: persuading President Barack Obama to use a 1953 law to bar offshore drilling permanently.
Alaska’s congressional delegation—Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young—has sent a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell urging the Department to keep all three lease sales proposed for Alaska’s OCS in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) final Five-Year Program for the years 2017 to 2022.
After plunking down more than $2.5 billion for drilling rights in U.S. Arctic waters, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and other companies have quietly relinquished claims they once hoped would net the next big oil discovery.
Proposed changes to federal rules regulating oil and natural gas activity on the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Arctic are necessary to create a predictable regulatory framework that supports safe exploration and American leadership in the Arctic, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R – Alaska) said Tuesday.
The leases in the Chukchi Sea are no longer considered competitive within Statoil’s global portfolio, so the decision has been made to exit the leases and close the office in Anchorage, Alaska.
Mike Slaton, Contributing Editor
Prices, sanctions and environmental politics chill the air
In light of current market conditions and low industry interest, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced Friday that it will cancel the two potential Arctic offshore lease sales scheduled under the current five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program for 2012-2017.
William J. Pike, World Oil
Arctic: The real deal