Congressional proposals to “Americanize” offshore vessels in the US Gulf of Mexico will inevitably grind OCS development and production to a halt and result in massive layoffs across the Gulf Coast and throughout the nation. A plethora of bills in the US House and Senate, among them HR 5619 and HR 3534 (the so-called CLEAR Act; see separate article) call for US flagging and 75% US ownership of the entire GOM fleet of drilling rigs, pipelay vessels, and construction and specialty vessels.
While this seems consistent with “Buy American” bumper sticker logic, these requirements present huge obstacles to stable offshore development. For example, of the worldwide drilling fleet capable of operating in 400 ft of water or deeper, only one is US flagged. That rig is currently on contract outside the US, according to a joint-industry White Paper warning of the severe implications of this train of legislation.
Find a link to this informative White Paper at www.iadc.org/offshore_GOM_reform. Look under IADC Documents.
Similarly, mobile offshore drilling units capable of drilling in 250 ft of water or greater, as well as specialty vessels, are largely flagged by countries outside the US.
There is no evidence that vessels outside of the US are less safe than those registered in the US. All non-US flagged vessels are inspected by the US Coast Gard. In addition, the principal nations of registry require standards that equal or exceed those of the US.
Building a US fleet of offshore vessels in any reasonable amount of time is essentially impossible. US shipyards would require several years to install the infrastructure necessary to fabricate the massive hulls required for deepwater facilities, drillships and semisubmersibles. (Many jackups, however, are constructed in the US.)
August 5th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Whats next – UK having “albionisation” of its fleet (Albion is a name for British Isles rather than anglicisation meaning only England excluding Scotland, Wales etc), Australianisation, Malaysianisation.
This runs counter to free trade that the US espouses and the Americans will be the first to complain the second Malaysia or UK excludes their vessels.
August 6th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
its hard to believe these morons are American and have any knowledge or consideration for the real facts of life. Its sad but unfortunately it’s another example of America slowly but surely grinding itself to a halt through over legislation and universal disinterest. The country has no infrastructure except for an under maintained freeway system. A few airlines that closely work together against the customer to offer probably the worlds worst air transportation system. A non-existent train system except if you’re a container. A non-existent nationwide bus system unless you want to be tortured by the few companies that do operate what they call a bus service. A country where everybody drives as a big a vehicle as possible on a comparative world scale cheap gas. Where increasingly more billions are spent on imported energy. And what do these little people do, shut down one of the few industries where they do have a big technological lead and God given resources. And guys this isn’t being done to you by those nasty people at BP or the Chinese, but by you’re own elected government. They hammer on BP but they should be thankful that there are companies such as BP that have the technical expertise and financial resources to fix what was a terrible incident. Consider the American part of this incident it was caused through basically human error every step of the way and nobody seems to be asking the right questions. Where is the Toolpusher of the rig, its his basic responsibility to look out for his people and his employers equipment. Didn’t he realize what was going down, that well was telling him for quite a while that things were going wrong. The BP Company-man is today little more than a radio operator taking instruction from his boss in town and did they realize what was going on. I have been in the business for over 40 years from a roustabout through to Rig Superintendent and Company-man on every type of drilling rig known to man and whats happened here is embarrassing for people like me. In fact the least guilty man is the now executed Tony Hayward, why because he didn’t have an ability to play to the media, but he got to the solution early through putting in place the process that finally did solve the problem. Sad indictment of the world we now live in.
August 25th, 2010 at 9:06 am
When politicians become involved , it’s self serving , particularly
during election time
September 1st, 2010 at 1:27 am
It’s a REALLY sad day for America when the politicians in Washington D.C. seem to be taking their lead and example from places like Venezuela and Nigeria….a truly sad day indeed. On the plus side (and unlike the two countries just mentioned) WE can actually vote out the non-thinking turds and attempt to elect some people with a little common sense (or, failing to find that in a politician, some that at least have a brain).
October 15th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
The problem has nothing to do with the flag on the vessels or any of the various maritime requirements. It has to do with the way drilling safety was compromised because certain people in control were paid more on drilling performance than on the safe completion of a very complex project.
Politicians will do what they have to do to get the votes. Taking advantage of the public’s lack of information is an easy way to do it. I do not see how one can be successful in politics and also be an honest person.