WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of the Interior today announced two new rules that will help improve drilling safety by strengthening requirements for safety equipment, well control systems, and blowout prevention practices on offshore oil and gas operations, and improve workplace safety by reducing the risk of human error.  “These new rules and the aggressive reform agenda we have undertaken are raising the bar for the oil and gas industry’s safety and environmental practices on the Outer Continental Shelf,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who announced the rules today in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.  “Under these new rules, operators will need to comply with tougher requirements for everything from well design and cementing practices to blowout preventers and employee training.  They will also need to develop comprehensive plans to manage risks and hazards at every step of the drilling process, so as to reduce the risk of human error.” 

The Drilling Safety Rule and the Workplace Safety Rule join a host of reforms that the Department of the Interior has undertaken in the five months since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that touch every stage of the offshore planning, review, permitting, drilling, and development processes.   “These two rules are part of a broader series of reforms we are undertaking to reduce the risks of offshore energy operations,” said Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM).  “We are substantially raising the standards for all offshore operators, and are doing it in an orderly and responsible way.  We will continue to move forward with other changes and reforms in what will remain a dynamic regulatory environment.  We owe the public nothing less.”

The Drilling Safety Rule, effective immediately upon publication, makes mandatory several requirements for the drilling process that were laid out in Secretary Salazar’s May 27th Safety Report to President Obama. The regulation prescribes proper cementing and casing practices and the appropriate use of drilling fluids in order to maintain well bore integrity, the first line of defense against a blowout.   The regulation also strengthens oversight of mechanisms designed to shut off the flow of oil and gas, primarily the Blowout Preventer (BOP) and its components, including Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), shear rams and pipe rams.   Operators must also secure independent and expert reviews of their well design, construction and flow intervention mechanisms. 

The Drilling Safety Rule is being issued under an emergency rule-making process.  Director Bromwich said that BOEM will soon move forward with a standard rulemaking process that includes greater opportunity for public comment and that considers implementing additional recommendations of the Secretary’s May 27th Safety Report, such as the requirement that BOP’s have two sets of blind shear rams.  The second regulation, known as the Workplace Safety Rule, requires offshore operators to have clear programs in place to identify potential hazards when they drill, clear protocol for addressing those hazards, and strong procedures and risk-reduction strategies for all phases of activity, from well design and construction to operation, maintenance, and decommissioning. 

 The Workplace Safety Rule requires operators to have a Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS), which is a comprehensive safety and environmental impact program designed to reduce human and organizational errors as the root cause of work-related accidents and offshore oil spills.  The Workplace Safety Rule makes mandatory American Petroleum Institute (API) Recommended Practice 75, which was previously a voluntary program to identify, address and manage safety hazards and environmental impacts in their operations.  BOEM will undertake additional workplace safety reforms, such as requirements for independent third-party verification of operators’ SEMS programs, through an additional rulemaking process that BOEM will be launching soon.

ORONO — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced late Tuesday a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee’s initial approval of a $10 million appropriation to support University of Maine deepwater offshore wind energy research and development.  Collins, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, requested the funding. It was approved by the Subcommittee on Energy and Water.

“This is a critical step, and it is the result of Sen. Collins’ determination and her commitment to Maine,” says Prof. Habib Dagher, director of UMaine’s AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center and the lead researcher on this project.”  Collins has supported this work since the beginning, already having helped secure $25 million in federal funding as UMaine works toward developing and testing this technology. Plans call for the first 1/3 scale floating wind turbine to be deployed off Maine for testing in 2012. The additional funding will be used to build, deploy and test a full-scale prototype of a 5 megawatt floating wind turbine, using Maine companies and Maine labor.

“As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Collins has tremendous influence in the funding process and we all appreciate her tireless advocacy on behalf of this initiative,” Dagher adds.  Collins arranged for U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to visit UMaine in June, to learn first-hand about the pioneering efforts of Dagher and his colleagues. Shortly after his return to Washington, Chu announced plans to dedicate $20 million for deepwater offshore wind technology development. Collins has pledged to work toward assuring that “the lion’s share” of those funds are appropriated to UMaine.

A Tuesday news release from Collins’ office called this subcommittee’s action “the first step toward securing the full $20 million investment.” No funds have been included thus far in House counterpart legislation.  The State of Maine Ocean Energy Task Force has set a goal of developing 5,000 megawatts of deepwater offshore wind farms by 2030, equivalent to the energy production of three nuclear power plants. This development represents less than 3 percent of the 150,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity that exists within 50 nautical miles of Maine’s coast. These farms would be placed approximately 20 miles to 50 miles offshore where they would not be visible from land, and where Maine has some of the best and most consistent winds in the country. Such an effort could attract as much as $20 billion of private capital to Maine. The offshore wind industry builds on Maine’s maritime tradition, and could create throusands of jobs across the manufacturing, engineering, permitting, environmental, boatbuilding, construction, maintenance and composite materials sectors.

By Harry R. Weber
The Associated Press

BILOXI, Miss. — A key U.S. government official said Friday that the moratorium on deep-water oil drilling won’t likely be extended past Nov. 30, but whether it is cut short will be entirely up to the industry.  Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said the industry must comply with current and soon-to-be-imposed safety regulations.  He said the government is mindful of the impact the moratorium has had on communities that rely on offshore drilling. But it must also be concerned about the effect of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP’s undersea well.  Bromwich plans to report to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in coming weeks on the scope and duration of the moratorium.  Bromwich spoke during a forum in Biloxi where he heard from industry experts and elected officials about oil spill response methods and concerns over the moratorium.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/09/10/2459055/end-of-ban-on-deep-water-drilling.html#ixzz0zS5ig6Qz

The data were carried from Toyohashi, Japan, to Los Angeles, California.

“We view this development as a significant milestone in the evolution of undersea cable transmission capability,” said Dr. Seymour Shapiro, vice president of research and development and chief technology officer of Tyco Telecommunications. “40G transmission is clearly the next standard for long-haul transmission, including undersea.”

In this field trial, a 40 gigabit per second signal was transmitted across two segments of Tata Communications’ TGN network for a total of 11,000 kilometers of undersea repeatered cable without regeneration. The path ran error-free over the entire three-day measurement period.

In a second experiment, a 40 gigabit per second data stream was looped back at the Los Angeles and Toyohashi terminals, so that the signal made four trips across the Pacific for a total transmission distance of 44,000 kilometers.

“The success of this field trial was made possible largely due to the top-notch support and cooperation by both the Tata Communications and Tyco Telecommunications teams and demonstrates that our TGN submarine cable network is capable of delivering native 40G transport,” said John Hayduk, chief technology officer of Tata Communications. “This can help us deliver another option to our customers, from both the service capability and the cost effectiveness points of view.”

“The deployment of 40G on undersea cable systems will be made possible by the confluence of 40G build-outs on terrestrial links and the availability of long-reach 40G transponders,” said William Marra, vice president and general manager of Tyco Telecommunications. “As higher bit rates become more prevalent in the terrestrial market, these services will naturally be required on undersea cables. Over the next year we expect to see 40 gigabits per second deployments starting with short ‘regional’ systems, which will be followed by transoceanic build-outs. This successful field trial illustrates how dedicated Tyco Telecommunications is to its existing customer base.” For more information, visit www.tycotelecom.com

SeaZone GeoTemporal Helps Monitor Port Development
SeaZone Solutions Ltd. (Hampshire, England) recently announced that its software is being used to monitor the impact of dredging activities taking place as part of a port development project in the U.K.

Selected by Titan Environmental Surveys (Glamorgan, Wales), SeaZone GeoTemporal has been used to manage raw data collected to form a baseline model and to analyze changes in water quality.

The software is helping the development company minimize disruption and control the environmental impact of their activities, Seazone said.

Titan was commissioned to undertake the collection of baseline monitoring data for the port development area, including wave, tide and current conditions; sediment levels; and other key water-quality parameters in relation to seasonal, tidal and nontidal contributing factors. The data were then used as benchmarks to evaluate additional measurements over the course of a full seasonal cycle.

“SeaZone GeoTemporal has helped us meet the project objectives in a timely and cost effective way,” said John Taylor, operations manager of oceanography at Titan. “The software allows data to be downloaded from the survey instruments at each monthly service interval, imported, quality controlled, analyzed and presented as data reports to the client with a rapid turnaround and consistent approach maintained throughout the duration of the project.” For more information, visit www.seazone.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A robotic submarine searched beneath the Mediterranean on Sunday for damaged communications cables, two days after Web and telephone access was knocked out for much of the Middle East. Telecommunication providers from Cairo to Dubai continued Sunday to scramble to reroute voice and data traffic through potentially costly detours in Asia and North America after the lines running under the Mediterranean Sea were damaged Friday.

Internet access was largely knocked out for two days in at least six countries that were affected – Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Yemen.

It is the second time this year that trans-Mediterranean cables to Europe have been severed. The earlier cut, in late January, was apparently caused by a ship’s anchor.

A ship operated by France Telecom’s marine division arrived Sunday afternoon at what it believes is the accident site south of Sicily, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.

The crew released a robotic submarine named “Hector” to search for two of the three damaged cables, which are owned by a consortium that includes the Paris-based telecommunications giant. Once found, the cable ends will be pulled to the surface and repaired on deck – a process that could take several days.

“We have to fix the cable fiber by fiber, and it’s a very huge cable,” Aymard said. He said the company hopes to have the first line fixed by Thursday.

The third cable is operated by Reliance Globalcom. Officials at that company could not be reached for comment.

Regional communication providers’ efforts to redirect voice and data traffic brought some areas back online over the weekend. Still, rolling outages continued to plague large parts of the region.

Emirati provider Etisalat said Internet service remained at about 85 percent capacity Sunday. The Abu Dhabi-based company was redirecting some of its data traffic through South Asia, spokesman Saeed al-Badi said.

Dubai-based Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., better known as Du, said it was sending data and international voice traffic through Asia and the western United States.

“Due to the diversion of all traffic … eastbound … customers may be experiencing slower Internet access time than usual. This is the same for all Internet traffic from the region and is likely to continue until the cables are repaired,” the company said.

The Egyptian government said about 80 percent of Internet services had been restored as of Sunday. Access was knocked out Friday and much of Saturday. Connection speeds were down in Yemen and in Jordan. There were no major outages in Lebanon but some users experienced spotty access.

Dubai-based airline Emirates, one of the Middle East’s most visible companies, said it had to cope with a 30 percent slowdown in online booking times and initially faced telephone problems.

Graham, in an interview Tuesday, pointed to the nuclear industry’s creation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations in the aftermath of the 1979 near-meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor as the kind of action the oil industry should take.

A similarly independent Kemeny Commission, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, conducted an investigation into the nuclear industry’s handling of safety issues after the March 1979 accident near Hershey, Pa., and recommended that the industry establish a program to develop appropriate safety standards for management, quality assurance, and operating procedures and practices.

The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations was quickly formed, and also conducts independent evaluations of power plants and the utilities that operate them.

The Kemeny Commission also recommended a systematic gathering, review and analysis of operating experience at all nuclear plants, and the establishment of an international communications network to help pass on relevant information about plant operations. INPO fills that role as well.

‘Very instructive’

“What we are learning from the nuclear power industry … was very instructive for the deepwater drilling industry and has similar applications to other industries which are developing their technology to produce at a rate that is rapidly outstripping their ability to safely manage that technology and respond to accidents,” Graham said.

One key difference that Graham recognized is that no new nuclear power plant has been authorized for construction since the Three Mile Island accident, which provided the industry with a lengthy period to improve its safety record.

“Now we’re into what’s referred to as the nuclear renaissance,” Graham said, referring to recent decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider licensing new reactors, including one proposed for construction by Entergy Nuclear at the utility’s existing River Bend nuclear station near Baton Rouge and another proposed at Entergy’s Grand Gulf nuclear station in Port Gibson, Miss.

“What the industry did was recognize that the lowest-performing entity in their group was going to set the public standard for the whole group,” Graham said.

Through establishment of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, “they set best practices, and they aggressively monitor those best practices, and the safety record of the nuclear industry in the last 30 years has been significantly better than it had been,” he said.

Federal regulation was restructured

The industry effort was matched by a restructuring of federal regulation of nuclear plants. The Atomic Energy Commission had been tasked with both regulation and promotion of nuclear power, similar to the roles played by the Minerals Management Service before the Deepwater Horizon accident.

Congress created a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission to handle regulation, and assigned other promotional roles to the Department of Energy. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reconstituted the Minerals Management Service into three separate divisions, Office of Natural Resources Revenue, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, all under the new moniker of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

Graham and commissioner Terry Garcia, a senior executive at National Geographic magazine and former assistant secretary of the Commerce Department, said their final report, due in mid-January, will focus on such safety management issues,

The report also will focus on whether federal law now allows or needs to be changed to allow federal officials to direct toward implementation of the state’s coastal restoration master plan a large share of the billions of dollars BP may owe to mitigate natural resource damages or in fines for violation of environmental regulations.

Graham suggested that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, appointed by President Barack Obama to develop an oil spill recovery plan for the Gulf Coast, is thinking in the same direction.

Long-term financing

“I don’t want to infringe on the private conversation we had with Secretary Mabus, but I think that’s going to be a significant part of his report,” Graham said, when asked if either report would recommend ways of financing the state’s long-term coastal restoration efforts. “I think not only the quantity of resources, but the reliability of those resources. If you’re in a project like this that’s going to take 30 or 40 years for completion, you can’t go along for five years and have the spigot turned off.

“We in fact had that happen in the Everglades, and it was very damaging,” Graham said, referring to the 20-year effort to restore the Florida “river of grass” to environmental health. “So ideally, if you could get a source of financing that didn’t require congressional appropriations, that was some form of a trust fund that could be accessed with confidence over an extended period of time, that would be the preferable form of financing.”

A spokeswoman for Mabus would not say whether the recovery plan will include such a recommendation for long-term coastal restoration financing.

“Sorry, I’m not at liberty to discuss the secretary’s private conversations,” said Navy Capt. Beci Brenton. “The secretary will make his recommendations in his report to the president in a few weeks.”

Graham also had some advice for state officials who have been repeatedly critical of the Army Corps of Engineers’ leadership of coastal restoration projects, after hearing their concerns over dinner with state officials leading the program Monday night.

Surprised at corps reputation

“Frankly, I was surprised at how searing their criticism of the corps of engineers was as being more of a barrier than a launching pad to coastal protection,” Graham said. “I might say I was a little surprised, because I’ve spent a lot of my life working on Everglades restoration, which is another complicated topic and in the last 25 years, the corps office under which we work, which is in Jacksonville, has had a cultural transition and has become much more progressive and affirmative in supporting things like restoration.

Graham said that was likely in part the result of the luck of the draw in the appointment of a series of officers to three-year district commander appointments in Jacksonville “who were looking to find ‘yes’ answers, rather than ‘no’ for an answer.”

He suggested that state officials should lobby the Obama administration for the replacement of corps officers in both the New Orleans District and Vicksburg division headquarters offices that they feel are obstructing implementation of the state’s restoration plan.

NOLA.com

Mar. 8, 2008–More than 95 percent of all transoceanic telephone and Internet communications flow at the speed of light through several hundred thousand miles of privately owned submarine cable that’s only about the width of a finger.

The phrase “technological marvel” barely describes this web of human genius on which the world increasingly relies for globalized commerce, government and personal use. Yet as sophisticated as the web and the Internet are, recent events exposed a chilling vulnerability and a glance at the chaos that could ensue if and when they fail.

On Jan. 30, two cables were mysteriously cut (by a ship’s anchor, authorities contend) in what was supposed to be a restricted, ship-free area in the Mediterranean Sea north of Alexandria, Egypt, disrupting Internet and telephone service across the Middle East and India.

Cairo spent a day without Internet service. One mobile phone company executive in Egypt described the problem to the news site Bloomberg.com as “a national disaster.”

On Feb. 1, a Persian Gulf cable that runs through the Suez to Sri Lanka was either cut or knocked out by power failure, adding to the communications misery in the region. Within hours, a fourth cable, linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates via the islands of Haloul and Das, was either cut or knocked out by power failure.

While the submarine cable industry and authorities were deflecting conspiracy speculation, most of the world lost access to YouTube for several hours on Feb. 24 when Pakistan’s government ordered the country’s 70 Internet service providers to block access to anti-Islamic movies on that site. A programming misstep affected two-thirds of the global Internet population, The Associated Press reported.

Of that mess, Todd Underwood of Renesys Corp., a New Hampshire firm that monitors Internet pathways, told the AP: “To be honest, there’s not a single thing preventing this from happening to E-Trade or Bank of America or the FBI.”

Of the mysterious severed-cable problems in the Mideast, Col. R.S. Parihar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, told the International Herald Tribune: “This has been an eye-opener for us and everyone in the telecom industry worldwide. These are owned by private operators, and there are no governments or armies protecting these cables.”

Much is at stake. One example from the commercial constellation of operators involves Verizon Business, which operates a global IP network that covers 485,000 route miles and serves more than 2,700 cities in 150 countries.

The submarine cable system is far from built out and continues to expand as world communications rely more and more on that system. The more robust the system, the better it can reroute traffic around breaks. But concerns such as those raised by Parihar and Underwood of Renesys deserve immediate, high-priority consideration.

Currently, monitoring of the submarine network falls to several tracking organizations and the International Cable Protection Committee, an 86-member coalition of private interests in nearly 50 countries that works closely with offshore industries that utilize the seabed for purposes ranging from offshore drilling to fishing.

That’s all good, but are there enough eyes on the network? It would seem not. Is it time for help from the military? Perhaps.

One thing’s for sure: The submarine cable system must be given every possible security resource. We hope we never find out that the private sector wasn’t up to that challenge.

To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.star-telegram.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Cable operators announced the start off of repair works at two of the three broken undersea cables that were disrupted last week outside the Egyptian city of Alexandria, causing Internet access problems throughout Middle East and India. The repair works will take at least a week to be completed, according to Flag Telecom, one of the firms responsible for the cable.

The cause of the disruption remains unknown, as cable operators are working on restoring the Internet connections as soon as possible. According to several reports, India has lost 60% of its bandwidth, and according to Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association, things aren’t expected to return to normal for the next 10 days.

The investigations continue, but more information is to be expected as soon as all the repairing crews will reach the broken cables. One of the theories was that a tanker might have dragged its anchor on the sea bed, but the Egyptian communication ministry said no ships were reported in the area at the time of the disruption.

Not all cables have been damaged simultaneously. On January 30, Flag Telecom Europe-Asia cable and SEA-ME-WE-4 cable were disrupted outside the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, and two day later, on February 1st, the Falcon cable, also owned by Flag Telecom, was damaged 56 km from Dubai. Consequently one question appears: Could this be a simple coincidence?

The impact in countries around the Gulf Region and South Asia had been minimized through redirecting communication services to new routes, but it is certain that Internet connection haven’t exactly been the best following the unfortunate incident. Egypt for example lost 70% of its Internet capacity and will continue to face this problem within the next week and a half.

The repair teams have been delayed by bad weather conditions on the Egyptian and Dubai coasts. At the same time, conspiracy theories have appeared, according to which the ‘perfect timing’ was simply too perfect to be a coincidence, and this whole thing could be an attempt to deprive some Islamic countries of Internet access. More details on the exact causes of the disruption are to be expected within the next week.

NASCA asked the Commission to rescind the new rules “as ill-conceived and sought by no one – not even by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,” which oversees the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), which the new rules are intended to implement.

The FCC ammended its cable landing license rules and application procedures so they are consistent with the CZMA in an order issued in June that modified some of its parts 1 and 63 rules applying to the provision of international telecommunications services. The order was adopted as part of the agency’s 2002 biennial review.

“NASCA’s petition for reconsideration consists of five parts,” the group said. “First, NASCA explains that the CZMA does not require the FCC to promulgate any rules for the processing of cable landing licenses. Second, NASCA explains that because the Commission failed to account appropriately for states’ authority to review ‘unlisted activities,’ cable landing license applicants cannot comply with the Commission’s CZMA rules as adopted. Third, NASCA argues that the Commission erred in assessing the burdens and benefits of its new CZMA rules, mischaracterizing significant delays as ‘minimal,’ effectively gutting and trivializing its much admired streamlined processing rules for submarine cables, and failing to reconcile its new rules with Commission policies encouraging investment and infrastructure development. Fourth, NASCA argues that the Commission’s new CZMA rules are, as a practical matter, unworkable. Fifth, NASCA argues that the Commission’s new CZMA rules violate U.S. WTO [World Trade Organization] commitments regarding licensing criteria.”- Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com

Americans suddenly are serious about finding alternative forms of energy. We’re seeking to reduce our need for coal, oil and natural gas, which contribute to pollution and climate change. That’s why utilities, industry and Wall Street firms are investing in “renewables”—energy that is quickly replenished by a natural process, like sunlight. With oil selling at about $100 a barrel and the U.S. dependent on imports from unstable countries, there also are economic and security reasons to develop new energy. Among the sources entrepreneurs are exploring are geothermal, solar and wind power. And with about 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by water, they’re becoming interested in what the tides, oceans, river currents and waves can yield. Here are some of the more unusual projects gearing up around the nation.
THE NORTHEAST
What Lies Beneath
Inventors have long dreamed of tapping into the energy of fast-flowing rivers. Last year, Verdant Power harnessed the force of the East River, which surges through New York City. The company placed six 16-foot-tall turbines on the river floor—generating about 7100 kilowatt hours of electricity at a slightly higher cost than traditional sources. The project was halted for technical reasons, but the turbines will be refitted next month, says Trey Taylor, Verdant’s president. He predicts that the project eventually could supply electricity to more than 8000 homes.

THE NORTHWEST
Catching the Wave
With its rough seas, the Pacific Northwest has long attracted surfers. Now energy companies are trying to catch a wave too. Canada’s Finavera Renewables has the early lead, having installed a 72-foot-tall buoy off the coast of Oregon which uses up-and-down wave motion to drive a piston that generates power. Jason Bak, 34—a former prospector and Finavera’s founder—raised $10 million to pursue his dream of capturing wave power. He describes waves as “the densest form of renewable energy on the planet,” with the potential to supply 5% to 10% of America’s energy. With the first operating license for wave power ever granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the company’s goal is to produce commercial power by 2012.

THE SOUTH
Current From Currents
The Gulf Stream moves 8 billion gallons of water a second. The current also flows within 15 miles of densely populated Florida. Frederick Driscoll, an ocean engineer at Florida Atlantic University, is among those leading a multimillion-dollar effort to develop waterproofed turbines that will be anchored to the bottom and send power to the shore through cables. Since the energy source is free, Driscoll, says, “it can be cost-effective.” He thinks commercial power will flow within five years and ultimately could supply over 25% of Florida’s electricity.
Eugene Linden is the author of Winds of Change. You can visit his Web site at www.EugeneLinden.com.