A federal court has thrown out key Endangered Species Act (ESA) analyses of oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which will be vacated as of Dec. 20, 2024. The United States District Court for the District of...more
The U.S. Department of the Interior on Sept. 29, 2023, announced its long-awaited Five-Year Offshore Leasing Plan as required by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (the Plan)....more
After years of blunted growth and false starts, the US is finally scaling up offshore wind. While most progress had been spurred by state policies incenting projects in the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast, the federal...more
On August 29th, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held the first auction for offshore wind areas in the Gulf of Mexico. Sheppard Mullin’s preview of the auction can be accessed here...more
On December 9, 2022, Guyana released the preliminary terms for an oil and gas tender covering a total of 14 offshore blocks, including 11 deep water blocks and three shallow water blocks.1 Guyana estimates that the blocks...more
The Inflation Reduction Act (the Act), which passed the U.S. Senate on Aug. 7, 2022, requires that previously announced offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska be held during the next two years....more
There are only a handful of things you can count on in life: death, taxes, and hurricanes. This is especially true for those of us living along the Gulf Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)...more
On April 19, 2021, eleven years since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report issued to Congress criticizing the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and...more
Southeast Asia appears set to become the next key market in the decommissioning of offshore oil and gas assets. With an estimated 200 offshore fields likely to stop producing by 2030, comprising more than 1,500 platforms and...more
An editorial published in the Standard-Examiner, titled “For states like Utah, IMO 2020’s new regulations can’t come fast enough”, discussed the operational advantages of refining operations in Utah and how the state is well...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently held that its two-question Doiron test for determining whether oilfield services contracts are maritime contracts also applies when evaluating the maritime-contract...more
In 2014, we wrote about efforts by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to require less traditional parties to fund the decommissioning of idle oil and gas wells and related...more
Our humble little blog is so focused on the onshore shale plays, we sometimes need to be reminded that offshore crude oil production is increasing as well. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “U.S....more
It has been years (2009) since I last wrote an article discussing the availability of U.S. citizens to work offshore in support of oil and gas projects during a downturn in the economy. And now, it is even worse. With the...more
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) has backed away from its proposed rulemaking regarding financial assurance requirements for the Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”). On August 19, 2014, BOEM published an Advance...more
The historic tender for shallow water blocks in the Gulf of Mexico will allow for private and foreign investment in Mexican oil and gas for the first time in almost 80 years. On July 15, Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons...more
The U.S. Gulf Coast—with its 1.4 million barrels per day of coker[*] refining capacity geared to maximize output of high-value lighter products from lower-cost, heavy, high-sulfur crude oil feedstocks—is an ideal market for...more
The current moratorium on oil exploration and production in the Western Gap portion of the Gulf of Mexico will end shortly. This development will help to kick start cooperative agreements between countries as well as spur...more