TPT March 2013

Global Marketplace

True Profiles

term purchase agreements – 20 years or more – are reached with foreign buyers. Even so, Mr Krauss reported, at least 15 proposed terminal projects have filed regulatory applications to export gas. If all are approved, they could export more than 25 billion cubic feet a day, equivalent to more than a third of domestically consumed natural gas. › If the rigorous federal regulatory permitting process were not daunting enough, terminal builders also face stiff resistance from advocates for the environment, who envision a frenzy of shale drilling dependent on hydraulic fracturing of hard rocks, which they claim endangers local water supplies and pollutes the air. Opponents have begun lobbying the Obama administration to reject most of the planned terminals, and protests have already occurred. Sounding another note, Dow Chemical and some other big users of natural gas have expressed concerns that an export boom could threaten to raise natural gas prices for factories and consumers and, ultimately, kill American jobs. A $1.4bn settlement ends a US probe into the rig-owner’s role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster of 2010 “This resolution of criminal allegations and civil claims against Transocean brings us one significant step closer to justice for the human, environmental and economic devastation wrought by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.” The devastation invoked by Eric Holder, the US attorney general, of course derived from the drilling-rig explosion of April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and precipitated a flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from a burst well. The settlement announced on 3 January of this year, between the Justice Department and the owner of the drilling rig, obliges Swiss-based Transocean Ltd to pay $1bn in civil penalties and $400mn in criminal penalties and plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act. A series of US investigations has apportioned blame for the nation’s worst offshore oil spill among Transocean; the London-based oil company BP PLC, which leased the rig from Transocean; and other partners on the drilling project including cement contractor Halliburton, the Houston, Texas- based company which also has headquarters in Dubai. The Deepwater Horizon was drilling in water a mile deep about 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast when it exploded and burned for some 36 hours before sinking. The Justice Department claimed that Transocean crew members on the rig, acting at the direction of BP supervisors, had failed to fully investigate clear signs that oil and gas were flowing into the well to the bursting point. BP has already agreed to pay a record $4.5bn in penalties and plead guilty to criminal charges related to the spill, but the deal does not resolve civil claims against the company. The first phase of a trial to identify causes of the blowout of

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March 2013