Dearth of Ships Delays Drilling of Offshore Oil

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to end a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, arguing that the steps were needed to lower gasoline prices and bolster national security. But even as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel — up from $68 a year ago — the world’s existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years. Some oil companies have been forced to postpone exploration while waiting for a drilling rig, executives and analysts said.

Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/business/19drillship.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[NMDemDist2]

1. not just the ocean going drill rigs either

here in my corner of the oilpatch, drill rigs are working 24/7/365 and booked over a year in advance.

[Arctic Dave]

2. Same here. We are actually bringing old crappy

drilling rigs out of mothball and having them refitted to go back to work. Five years ago they were supposed to go to the scrap yard. If you would have said they would go back to the field you would have been piss tested.

[Kip Humphrey]

3. There is no capacity in rigs and subsea equipment.. Opening the coasts will drive costs thru roof.

[Doug.Goodall]

4. Shipbuilding in the United States is almost non-existent

The Republicans in Congress have kept their defense contractor masters at General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin fat building warships and submarines. The stupid Republicans let the domestic ship building industry slide down to nothing while extracting short term profits from off shore companies.

It is all about money with Republicans. They can make more money using off shore companies than they can using resources here in America. Now we are all paying for the profits of the rich with a broken economy.

[Thothmes]

5. I disagree.

The commercial shipbuilding business in this country has been dying for the last 50 years. Both Republican and Democratic administrations bear a hand in allowing the industrial capability to build ships. To my knowledge, Newport New Shipbuilding and Drydock defaulted on a commercial tanker contract in the mid to late ninties. Since then no large ships, other than those paid for by the the U.S. Government have been built in the U.S. The tanker contract for NNSBD was the first commercial ship contract since the early 80s, when Avondale had a construction contract for 5 exotic (hazardous) cargo tankers. We are probably the only shipbuilding country in the world where government did not subsudize the business. The large ship builders left in this country exist soly on Navy, and MSCS contracts.

[Mudoria]

6. Instead of off shore drilling shouldn't we be asking

why the oil companies aren't already drilling on those federal lands they received sweetheart leases for that are standing idle??