by Sonia Shah
7 Rules about foreign investment are being relaxed in many countries, often against public opinion. See, for example, Energy Information Administration, “Country Analysis Briefs.”
8 “PIW Ranks the World’s Top Oil Companies,” PIW-Special Supplement Issue, December 23, 2002, p. 1.
9 “The 112 Billion Barrel Question,” International Petroleum Finance (April 2003), p. 1.
10 Ian Vann, “New Oil Provinces—The Opportunities and Constraints,” (Speech given at the Institute of Petroleum in London, February 17, 2003).
11 “Global E&P outlays to rise ‘materially’ in ’06,” Oil & Gas Journal, December 19, 2005, 5; “Global Exploration and Development Spending Expected to increase,” Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections, February 6, 2003; International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “World Development Indicators,” 2001, p. 14.
12 Andrew McBarnet, “Customers Shun Shiny New Toys: Just When 3D Data Acquisition Seemed Commercially Viable, the Bottom Fell Out of the Market,” Financial Times, June 10, 1999, p. 2.
13 Ibid.
14 Vann, “New Oil Provinces.”
15 Kathy Shirley, “Forecast: Fair to Partly Cloudy? Future Exploration Investing Uncertain,” AAPG Explorer, April 2004.
16 IHS Energy, interview by the author, March 3, 2003.
17 Lee C. Lawyer, letter to the author, 2003.
18 Lee C. Lawyer and Kenneth S. Deffeyes, letters to the author, 2003.
19 David Kaplan, “BP project Now Thunder Horse; Capitulation on Name Eases Lakota Objection,” Houston Chronicle, February 21, 2002, p. 1.
20 Kathy Shirley, “GOM Deep Water + Subsalt Plays: The Promise of the Best of Both Worlds,” Explorer (October 2000).
21 Lee C. Lawyer, letter to the author, 2003.
22 Linda R. Sternbach, “West Africa—A Special Issue on an Emerging World Petroleum Province,” Leading Edge (November 2002), pp. 1101-1102.
23 “West Africa: Potential for Oil Brings New Problems to São Tomé,” Offshore (February 2003), p. 38.
24 Jon Lee Anderson, “Our New Best Friend: Who Needs Saudi Arabia When You’ve Got São Tomé?” New Yorker, October 7, 2002, p. 74.
25 Martin Quinlan, “West African Discoveries Edging Towards Development,” Petroleum Economist (June 1997), p. 44.
26 Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, “Who Will Fund America’s Energy Future? Petroleum Research and Development in the Twenty-first Century” (summer 2002), Table 2, p. 12.
27 Kenneth S. Deffeyes, interview by the author, December 28, 2002.
28 Alain Delaytermoz, “Ultra-Deepwater E&P Challenges Ahead,” Offshore (December 2001), p. 32.
29 U.S. News & World Report, “America’s Best Graduate Schools 2004,” http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/eng/brief/engsp12_brief.php#year. .
30 Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 161, 202.
31 Offshore Technology Research Center, “Mission Statement,” http://otrc.tamu.edu/Pages/mission.htm. .
32 “TU, ChevronTexaco to Start Model Partnership,” press release, University of Tulsa, July 26, 2002.
33 Malcolm Brown, “London Links,” Frontiers (December 2002), p. 11.
34 Corporate Watch et al., “Degrees of Capture: Universities, the Oil Industry, and Climate Change,” 2003, pp. 2, 5.
35 Michelle Markley, interview by the author, December 2002.
36 Albert Bally, letter to the author, March 14, 2003.
37 American Petroleum Institute, “Focus on Innovation,” http://www.classroom-energy.org/students/technology/index.html. .
38 U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy, “Environmental Benefits of Advanced Oil and Gas Technology,” March 5, 1999.
39 Rick Donoghue, “4-D: Back to the Future,” Hart’s E&P Net (March 2003).
40 John R. Fanchi, “State of the Art 4D Seismic Monitoring: The Technique, the Record, and the Future,” Oil & Gas Journal, May 31, 1999, p. 38.
41 Will Harvie, “On Guard: Ice Patrol Out to Make Sure the Oil Platform Is No Second Titanic,” Oilweek, December 1, 1997, p. 20.
42 Alan Boras, “Hibernia: The Question Asked: ‘Does It Make Economic Sense, Here and Now, Today and For the Future?’ Calgary Herald, January 10, 1993, p. A9.
43 Douglas Martin, “Oil Drillers off Canada Battle Nature and Politics,” New York Times, March 15, 1981.
44 Brian Bergman, “One of a Kind: The Hibernia Rig Is an Engineering Wonder,” Maclean’s, March 3, 1997, p. 30.
45 George Peer, “Engineering Marvel,” Oilweek, December 1, 1997, p. 26.
46 Bergman, “One of a Kind,” p. 30.
47 Harvie, “On Guard,” p. 20.
48 Lawrence Lack, “Hibernia Oil Project Started at Last,” Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 1990, p. 7.
49 Hibernia, “The Hibernia Reservoir,” http://www.hibernia.ca/html/about_hibernia/reservoir.html.
50 “Analysis: Angola: Deeply Ambitious,” Petroleum Economist, March 31, 2002, p. 12.
51 Jeremy Beckman, “TotalFinaElf Prepares to Launch Two Further Developments in Angola Block 17,” Offshore (February 2003), p. 26.
52 See, for example, SPG Media Limited, “Industry Projects: Abana, Gulf of Guinea, Nigeria,” Offshore Technology, http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/abana/index.html. .
53 Robert E. Snyder, “FPSO Allows Fast-Track Development,” World Oil (July 1996), p. 33.
54 “TotalFinaElf’s Girassol Project and Geologist Bally Selected to Receive 2003 OTC Distinguished Achievement Awards,” press release, Offshore Technology Conference.
55 “Deep-Water Technology; Gulf of Guinea: New Ideas,” Petroleum Economist, October 17, 2002, p. 28.
56 American Petroleum Institute, “Focus on Innovation,” http://www.classroom-energy.org/students/technology/index.html. ; Joe W. Key, “FPSO Market Projected at $8.5 Billion for 1990s,” Ocean Industry (June 1991), p. 56.
Chapter Six
1 National Research Council, Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003), p. 152.Some innovations meant to soften the industry’s environmental footprint in Alaska had actually created new, potentially more troubling problems. The oil industry injected wastes into holes in the ground—“disposal wells”—rather than shoving it into ugly open pits, but this could end up contaminating the groundwater. They built roads out of ice rather than the more intrusive gravel, but this required siphoning billions of gallons of water from lakes. The depleted lakes have been left so shallow they are liable to freeze solid. Fish can’t live in them anymore. National Research Council, Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope, pp. 77, 115-116.
2 Project Underground, “Drilling to the Ends of the Earth,” September 13, 1998, http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/drilling/intro.html. .
3 Greenpeace UK, “Seismic Exploration: Greenpeace Media Briefing Notes.”
4 Deborah Hargreaves, “Sweep of a Dustbin and Brush—North Sea Oil Prospects,” Financial Times, December 18, 1991, p. 28.
5 “Injuries to International Petroleum Drilling Workers, 1988-1990,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, February 26, 1993, p. 128.
6 Charles Woolfson, John Foster, and Matthias Beck, Paying for the Piper: Capital and Labour in Britain’s Offshore Oil Industry (London: Mansell, 1996), pp. 106-108.
7 Stuart Millar, “Blood and Black Gold: A Decade After the Piper Alpha Disaster, for the Survivors and Bereaved There Are Still Burning Questions of Recognition and Responsibility,” The Guardian, July 6, 1998, p. 2.
8 This and following are from an interview of Jake Molloy by the author, February 2003.
9 Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics 2000, “Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Transported in the United States by Mode,” Table 1-51M.
10 Allan J. Mayer et al., “How
to Make Tankers Safer,” Newsweek, January 17, 1977, p. 60.
11 René De La Pedraja, A Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry: Since the Introduction of Steam (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), p. 456.
12 Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 114-115.
13 Sonia Shah, “The Quest for Oil Under the Great Barrier Reef,” Progressive (July 2003), p. 33.
14 “SeaRiver Commissions Double-Hull Alaska Tanker Design,” Oil & Gas Journal, February 3, 2003, p. 40.
15 Greg Muttitt and James Marriott, “Some Common Concerns: Imagining BP’s Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey Pipelines System,” PLATFORM (November 2002), p. 129.
16 ExxonValdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, “Oil Spill Facts,” available at http://www.oilspill.state.ak.us/facts/qanda.html.
17 De La Pedraja, A Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry, p. 194.
18 “SeaRiver Commissions Double-Hull Alaska Tanker Design,” p. 40.
19 Leggett, The Carbon War, p. 114.
20 Molloy interview.
21 ExxonValdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, “Oil Spill Facts,” http://www.oilspill.state.ak.us/facts/qanda.html. .
22 De La Pedraja, A Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry, p. 194.
23 David Brinkerhoff, “U.S. Petroleum Engineers Become Rare Commodity,” Reuters News Service, February 18, 2004.
24 CBS News Transcripts, “Readin’, Writin’, and Commercials: Marketing Strategies of Many Large Corporations Now Target Public Classrooms,” 60 Minutes, October 10, 1993.
25 Peter Morris (International Commission on Shipping), interview by the author, May 30, 2003.
26 “SeaRiver Commissions Double-Hull Alaska Tanker Design,” p. 40.
27 Leggett, The Carbon War, p. 115.
28 International Transport Workers’ Federation, “Flags of Convenience Campaign Report 2001/02.”
29 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Review of Maritime Transport 2002 (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2002), Table 8, p. 21.
30 International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, “INTERTANKO Tanker Facts 2002,” http://www.intertanko.com/about/annualreports/2001/2_8.html.
31 Siamack Shojai, ed., New Global Oil Market: Understanding Energy Issues in the World Economy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), pp. 178-179.
32 “Shipping: Follow the Flag of Convenience,” Economist, February 22, 1997, p. 75.
33 U.S. Maritime Administration, Waterborne Databank, “United States Waterborne Commerce,” April 3, 2003, http://www.marad.dot.gov/Marad_Statistics/.
34 International Transport Workers’ Federation, “Sweatships: Fact Sheet About the Cruise Industry,” http://www.itf.org.uk/itfweb/publications/sweatships/factsheet.htm.
35 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions et al., “More Troubled Waters: Fishing, Pollution, and FOCs,” August 2002, p. 19.
36 Morris interview.
37 Peter Morris, “Ships, Slaves and Competition,” International Commission on Shipping, 2000.
38 Peter Ford, “Why Aging Oil Tankers Still Ply the Seas,” Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 2002.
39 Owen Bowcott and Linus Gregoriadis, “Chirac Leads Calls to Outlaw Single-Hull Tankers After Spate of Accidents,” The Guardian, November 20, 2002.
40 Emma Daly, “The Sinking of the Prestige,” Observer, November 24, 2002, p. 18.
41 Emma Daly, “Oil from Crippled Ship Fouling Beaches in Spain,” New York Times, November 19, 2002, p. 19.
42 Bowcott and Gregoriadis, “Chirac Leads Calls to Outlaw Single-Hull Tankers After Spate of Accidents.”
43 Op-ed, “Cracking Open an Oil Tanker,” New York Times, November 20, 2002.
44 Emma Daly, “Oil Tanker Splits Apart off Spain, Threatening Coast,” New York Times, November 20, 2002, p. 6.
45 Emma Daly, “Oil Spilled off Spanish Coast Threatens Shellfishing Grounds,” New York Times, December 5, 2002, p. 19.
46 Matthew R. Simmons, “Are Oil and Murphy’s Law About to Meet?” World Oil, February 2003.
47 Giles Tremlett, “Sunken Prestige Tanker Will Leak Oil for Another Three Years,” The Guardian, December 12, 2002, p. 18.
48 “Four-fifths of remaining fuel in sunken tanker Prestige pumped out,” Platts Oilgram Price Report, September 7, 2004.
49 Bowcott and Gregoriadis, “Chirac Leads Calls to Outlaw Single-Hull Tankers After Spate of Accidents.”
50 Ford, “Why Aging Oil Tankers Still Ply the Seas.”
51 Morris interview.
52 “The Pending Formalization,” Oil & Gas Journal, April 14, 2003, p. 7.
53 “SeaRiver Commissions Double-Hull Alaska Tanker Design,” p. 40.
54 “The Price of Oil,” New Statesman, November 25, 2002, p. 6.
55 Jon P. Davidson et al., Exploring Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2002), p. 465. Although dumping oil-contaminated ballast water, a common practice within the oil industry, has yet to attract regulators’ ire, between 1993 and 2002, the U.S. Justice Department fined several of the hundreds of cruise ships touring the world’s more pleasant ports over $48 million for regularly dumping the plastic trash, toxic waste, and oil-contaminated water produced by their thousands of vacationing passengers onboard directly into the sea. Marilyn Adams, “Cruise-Ship Dumping Poisons Seas, Frustrates U.S. Enforcers,” USA Today, November 8, 2002, p. 1.
56 Leggett, The Carbon War, p. 113.
57 International Transport Workers’ Federation, “Flags of Convenience Campaign Report 2001/02.”
58 Veronica Murillo, “Floating Technology: Tanker Lightering, Transport Leaks Carry Highest Risk in FPSO Operations,” Offshore (November 2000), p. 68.
59 World Wildlife Fund, “The Status of Natural Resources on the High Seas,” 2001, p. 33.
60 M. H. Kim, interview by the author, April 4, 2003. Rene Coenen (Office for the London Convention 1972), letter to the author, April 16, 2003.
61 Minerals Management Service, “MMS Reaches Decision About FPSO’s in Gulf of Mexico,” press release, January 2, 2002.
62 “Lots of FPSO, FSO, FSU Contracts, Except U.S. Gulf,” Offshore (November 2000), p. 32.
63 John Morrison (telecoms technician for Bluewater on the Glas Dowr FPSO off South Africa), letter to the author, April 6, 2003.
64 R. S. Carney, ed., “Workshop on Environmental Issues Surrounding Deepwater Oil and Gas Development: Final Report,” OCS Study MMS 98-0022 (New Orleans, LA: U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, 1997), p. 9.
65 Robert S. Carney, letter to the author, March 29, 2003.
66 Jonathan Wills, “Muddied Waters: A Survey of Offshore Oilfield Drilling Wastes and Disposal Techniques to Reduce the Ecological Impact of Sea Dumping,” Ekologicheskaya Vahkta Sakhalina (Sakhalin Environment Watch), May 25, 2000, http://www.offshore-environment.com/drillcuttings.html.
67 F. Olsgard et al., “A Comprehensive Analysis of the Effects of Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration and Production on the Benthic Communities of the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” Marine Ecology Progress Series 122 (1995). See http://www.oilandgas.org.uk/.
68 Ian MacDonald, “The Edge of the Gulf: Deep Sea Expedition to the Gulf of Mexico,” 2000, http://www.nurp.noaa.gov/.
69 Erwin Suess et al., “Flammable Ice,” Scientific American 281, no. 5 (1999), p. 76.
70 Leggett, The Carbon War, pp. 45-46.
71 Comments by Bill Dillon, Geologist, USGS, http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/bermuda.html.
72 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Fire in Ice,” Ocean Explorer/ Explorations, http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/deepeast01/background/fire/fire.html.
73 Gregory J. Hatton et al., “Cold Reality: Ice-Like Hydrates Can Spell Trouble for Deepwater Hydrocarbon Flow Lines,” SwRI Technology Tod
ay (spring 1998).
74 Hatton et al., “Cold Reality.”
75 Jeremy Beckman, “Subsea Installations Running Smoothly at Girassol,” Offshore (February 2003), p. 30.
76 “A Survey of the Relationship of the Australian Spotted Jellyfish, Phyllorhiza Punctata, and OCS Platforms,” http://www.gulfbase.org/project/view.state.ak.us/facts/qanda.htmlphp?pid=asotrotasjppaop.
77 Robert S. Carney, interview by the author, March 28, 2003.
78 William J. Broad, “Legendary Monster of the Deep, 26-foot-squid, Captured on Film,” New York Times, September 28, 2005, p. 6.
79 Carney, ed., “Workshop on Environmental Issues,” p. 37.
80 Carney interview.
81 National Science Foundation, Summary of FY 2003 Budget Request to Congress, “Ocean Sciences,” http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/bud/fy2003/atmos_os.htm.
82 Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, “Who Will Fund America’s Energy Future? Petroleum Research and Development in the Twenty-first Century” (summer 2002), p. 3.
83 Pennsylvania State University, “Scientists Discover Methane Ice Worms on Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor,” press release, July 29, 1997.
84 Carney interview.
85 Molloy interview.
Chapter Seven
1 Terry Lynn Karl and Ian Gary, “Bottom of the Barrel: Africa’s Oil Boom and the Poor,” Catholic Relief Services report, June 2003, pp. 1-18.
2 Jerry Useem, “The Devil’s Excrement: Perez Alfonzo’s Different Name for Oil,” Fortune, January 21, 2003.
3 United Nations Development Program, “Human Development Report 2002.”
4 World Bank, “GNI per capita 2004, Atlas method and PPP,” available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf.
5 Karl and Gary, “Bottom of the Barrel,” p. 30.
6 Andy Denwood, “Gabon’s oil boom hangover,” BBC News, October 11, 2004, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3733578.stm.
7 Ibid., pp. 19-32.
8 Duncan Austin and Amanda Sauer, Changing Oil: Emerging Environmental Risks and Shareholder Value in the Oil and Gas Industry (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2002), p. 27.
