Event: Deepwater Oil & Gas Summit 2010
Organizer: China Energy Association and A.T. Unicorn Group
Date: 14th-16th Sept, 2010
Venue: The Peninsula Beijing, China
Contact Person: Miranda Liu
Tel: +86 21 3360 0066
Fax: +86 21 3360 0636
Email: miranda.liu@atunicorn.com
Web: www.asiadeepwater.net

Backgrounds:

As global demand for power, heating and transportation has been increasing, stepping forward to exploring deepwater oil and gas will play an ever greater role in meeting our energy needs.

The purpose of "Deepwater Oil & Gas Summit 2010", which will be held on September 14th-16th, 2010 at The Peninsula Beijing China, is to address current situation and future trends, discuss the latest deepwater oil and gas technologies and large projects, and to ensure the sustainable development of the deepwater oil and gas industry.

During this summit, government officials, specialists, scholars, executives and professionals from China and abroad will assemble to discuss the opportunities and challenges in the deepwater oil and gas industry as well as determine future trend. The summit is to be a leading edge summit to highlight the outstanding advances in deepwater technologies, global deepwater projects, and serve as the networking platform for greater collaboration across the sector.

As the organizers of "Deepwater Oil and Gas Summit 2010", China Energy Association and A.T. Unicorn Group sincerely invite you to join the "Deepwater Oil & Gas Summit 2010" to share your success and expertise.

Benefits of Attending

• Understand the current status, development & trend of Deepwater Oil & Gas industry
• Network with the leading players in Deepwater Oil & Gas industry
• Grasp the opportunities and meet the challenges
• Gain a detailed insight into the latest technology
• Reinforce your commitment to the industry

Projects

• Liwan 3-1, South China Sea, China
• Liuhua 34-2, South China Sea, China
• Liuhua 29-1, South China Sea, China
• Yakal-1 Oil Field, Philippines
• Thunder Horse Field, Gulf of Mexico, USA
• Akpo Deepwater Project, Nigeria
• Xikomba Oil Field Deepwater Development, Angola
• Kizomba Deepwater Project, Angola

Sessions

• Global Deepwater Market Trends & Opportunities
• Perspectives & Case Studies from NOCs & IOCs
• Deepwater Drilling Rig Focus
• Leading Subsea Engineering Tech Showcase
• OSV, FPSO & FLNG Trends

 

Meeting Schedules

Gulf Coast Chapter Meeting
Date and Time: 17 June 2010, at 1330 hrs.
Location: Divers Supply, Inc. (2396 Belle Chasse Hwy., Gretna, LA 70056)

ADCI Board of Directors Meeting
Date and Time: 23 July 2010, at 0800 hrs.
Location: Pittsburgh Airport Hyatt Hotel, (Pittsburgh, PA)

Midwest/East Coast Chapter Meeting
Date and Time: 24 July 2010, at 0900 hrs.
Location: T. Riley Marina, New Brighton, PA

 

Many of you in the commercial diving industry are aware of the significant early contributions of the late Dan Wilson to our industry.

Wilson is credited with introducing deep mixed gas diving to the civilian commercial diving industry with a demonstration dive off Santa Barbara in November of 1962.  Wilson went on to form General Offshore Divers here in Santa Barbara and later started Subsea International in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dan's dive was a catalyst for the expansion and development of commercial diving and equipment into the industry we know today. I am writing to ask for the support and help of our industry to preserve a piece of our own heritage.

One of Dan's early developments was the world's first commercial lockout diving bell the Purisima.   Purisima was originally launched in Santa Barbara in 1964 and ultimately was shelved with the rapid evolvement of diving technology at the time.

Prior to Wilson's death in 2007, Dan had reacquired the bell from my former boss at IUC, the late Andre Galerne, whom we lost in 2008.  Andre had purchased Purisima for its historical significance.  Dan had kept the Purisima in an indoor boat storage facility for a number of years in Florida. Purisima still sits there today, along with an outstanding storage bill.

I have maintained contact with Wilson's son, Dan, who lives in Montana.  This past October, Dan and I met — along with Lad Handelman, Bob Kirby, Bev Morgan, diving historian Chris Swann, Bob Christensen, Bob Ratcliffe and Greg Gorga, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. 

A result of that meeting was an overwhelming desire to see Purisima restored and returned to Santa Barbara at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum for a key exhibit.  The museum is located mere yards from where the bell was launched over 45 years ago. 

We are trying to raise a minimum of $10,000.00 to pay the storage and mobilization of Purisima to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum.  Funds raised beyond that will be used to  help sandblast, paint and prepare an interactive exhibit for the bell.

It was decided to ask for the support of our industry as a whole, given the significance of Dan Wilson's life-long work.  The Museum is excited about creating a special display with Purisima to supplement existing diving and early offshore oil industry exhibits.

All of us were excited about the possibility of ADCI membership sponsoring this unique display that will honor our industry and a man who dared to "think outside of the box."  Additionally, the display will be a significant representation of ADCI and commercial diving for tourists and visitors at museum.

I would like to ask for your company's financial support in this regard and to contact me directly if you can help.  The funds can be made payable to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum Purisima Project.  They will be held in an account until we reach our goal.  The museum is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization.

If you can help, financially or otherwise, please contact me at: subsea@cox.net or via cell phone at 805-708-0621.

Thanks in advance for your support and consideration in this all-volunteer effort!

Sincerely,
Don Barthelmess
Professor
Santa Barbara City College
Marine Diving Technology Department

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commercial diver Michael Ganas's novel, The Girl Who Rode Dolphins, recently received its fifth award, winning the Environmental/Green Fiction category of the 2010 International Book Awards (http://www.internationalbookawards.com/2010awardannoucement.html)

 

Other awards are as follows:

 

Winner of BooksandAuthors.net Best EPIC ADVENTURE and Best SCIENCE FICTION EPIC ADVENTURE of 2008 (two awards in this contest)

 

Winner of 2009 Green Book Festival's SCIENCE FICTION GENRE AWARD - http://www.greenbookfestival.com/

 

Finalist in 2009 National Indie Book Excellence Award for ACTION-ADVENTURE - http://www.indieexcellence.com/indie-results-2009.php#1

 

From the author:

I've always suspected that I would someday write a novel, and somewhere deep inside me I could always sense it wanting to come oozing out.  But the thing that finally compelled me to actually write it was the way my wife, Harriet, was able to cope with her illness.  Harriet is tough as nails and for the last ten years, she's been battling CML - chronic myeloid leukemia - and so far she's put up one hell of a valiant fight, absolutely refusing to yield to what most doctors would describe as a devastating, life-threatening malady.  Thus she made up her mind long ago to live out a normal existence, avoiding hospitals completely and refraining from seeing doctors as much as possible.  Consequently, it was her grit and determination that inspired me to take pen to paper and flesh out an adventure imbued with these admirable qualities of the spirit.  In its basic subliminal form I wanted to honor her with something unique, essentially a literary work that came from the deepest part of me, something only I could give her, but something which would reflect her iron will and indomitable strength.  This is initially mirrored in the book's opening scene where we find a woman adrift and marooned in a thunderous, tumultuous sea.  She is alone and clinging to a piece of flotsam, and the reader finds the woman to be pregnant.  By all rights, she should accept her fate and succumb to the elements, but she continues to fight on in the face of overwhelming odds, clinging to life and refusing to quit until she has nothing left within her to resist the battering forces of a sea gone mad.  Later in the book we learn the woman survives with the help of a dolphin and that her name is Harriet Grahm.  And although she has no recollection of her former life, she ends up taking on a new identity, becoming Amphitrite, one of the cornerstone characters of the story.  During her ordeal at sea, something incredible has happened to Amphitrite, and her failure to remember her past has somehow given her the power to glimpse the future.  Henceforth she becomes an arrant believer in this power and what the future holds, convinced her visions are real, and it is this ability that spills over and infects the reader to make the story palpable and real.

 

Writing the novel was a labor of love that took four years to complete.  In creating it, I had to constantly challenge myself to come up with new ideas, not always knowing where the story was headed since some of the characters within the developing plot started taking on a life of their own.  I only knew I wanted to take the reader on a journey to high adventure, an escape from the often mundane routines of everyday life most of us encounter, and in adhering to this I kept imagining what I'd like to see on the big screen if the novel was ever made into a blockbuster movie.

 

About the novel:

The Girl Who Rode Dolphins is a fast-paced and explosive action-adventure that is epic in scope, making use of a loaded plot and holding back an array of mysteries and unanswered questions until the last 150 pages where everything comes together in a fantastical, high-suspense thriller. Within the adventure there are 22 action scenes that will keep the reader thoroughly enraptured, and at times electrified according to those who have read it.  Fitting the novel into a specific fictional category can be subjective since the story falls within the boundaries of several genres.  The fact that it brims with action-adventure on an epic scale cannot be denied, and although it can also be argued that it has the makings of a mystery/thriller, it can just as well fit two other genres.  The storyline is spiced with healthy doses of fantasy, science fiction and philosophic viewpoints that tie right into a modern world and some of its most pressing issues: Islamic terrorism, global warming, and mankind's greatest vice, that of greed. And inasmuch as Haiti's past leadership and historical events, both past and present, were used as a backdrop for the writing of this novel, history was merged with fiction in such a way as to make the epic believable.  The story is further enriched by a diverse cast of personalities, some exceedingly virtuous, some sickeningly evil, and others in between, a few of whom are ultimately forced toward epiphany and a re-examination of their self-identity. Finally, the reader is led to wonder if the characters themselves are somehow being manipulated by a force far greater than themselves with the introduction of James Lovelock's controversial Gaia Hypothesis, an idea that the entire earth is alive and acts as a complete organism, possessing various self-regulating mechanisms for its survival.

 

 

 

 

Washington – Preliminary estimates show crippling job loss and significant economic impacts will result from the President's recent order to halt work on 33 exploratory wells in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and institute a six-month moratorium on all drilling in water depths greater than 500 feet. 

 

"The immediate impacts of the order will be felt by the families of tens of thousands of offshore workers who will be unemployed," said Burt Adams, Chairman of the National Ocean Industries Association.    

 

For each platform idled by the work stoppage, up to 1,400 jobs are at risk, and lost wages could reach $10 million per month per platform and up to $330 million per month for all 33 platforms, preliminary estimates from the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association (LMOGA) show.   

 

"At a time when the spill is already causing economic stress for key industries in the region, the president's action will make things much worse by putting more Gulf citizens out of work," said Adams.

 

The LMOGA estimates show the six-month halt would defer four percent of anticipated 2011 deepwater Gulf of Mexico production (80,000 barrels per day), and  likely render seven current discoveries sub-economic, putting $7.6 billion in future government revenues at risk.  Additionally, drilling rigs idled by the order will be contracted overseas, and will not be available to work in the Gulf once the halt is lifted, making the U.S. even more dependent on foreign oil.   "Other countries are apparently more confident in the overall safety of the oil and gas industry and will no doubt fill the potential void created by less domestic production," said Adams.

 

"The need to act in the face of the ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is understandable, but the 33 rigs affected by the presidential order are the very ones successfully inspected in early May at the order of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar," Adams said.  "Nobody wants to just rush into deepwater drilling during this ongoing crisis, but it appears that less draconian and potentially less harmful solutions such as increased inspection and recertification of equipment would be an acceptable compromise."

 

"Considering that the deepwater regions generate 80 percent of the Gulf's oil production and 45 percent of its natural gas production, a six-month work stoppage will have severe and perhaps long lasting impacts on our domestic energy supply and economic security," said Adams. "When you couple this 'no less than six-month' moratorium with the cancelled Western Gulf lease sale, the potential for long term job loss and economic hardship for the Gulf of Mexico looms even greater."

 

The offshore industry is responsible for nearly 200,000 jobs in the Gulf of Mexico alone, and provides 30 percent of our nation's domestic oil production and 11 percent of our domestic gas production.  Offshore oil and gas production accounts for an average $13 billion a year in non-tax revenues to states and the Federal government and has made over $24 billion available to the Land and Water Conservation Fund over the last 28 years.

 

 

NOIA is the only national trade association representing all segments of the offshore industry with an interest in the exploration and production of both traditional and renewable energy resources on the nation's outer continental shelf.  The NOIA membership comprises more than 250 companies engaged in business activities ranging from producing to drilling, engineering to marine and air transport, offshore construction to equipment manufacture and supply, telecommunications to finance and insurance.

 

Washington, DC:  Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey, who has been called upon to also serve as Acting Director of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), today announced that, before drilling new oil and gas wells on the Outer Continental Shelf, operators will be required to submit additional information about potential risks and safety considerations in their plans for exploration or development.  Exploration plans and development plans that have already been approved by MMS, including those that were approved using 'categorical exclusions' under the National Environmental Policy Act, will need to be resubmitted before any drilling of new wells.

"The moratorium on deepwater drilling that Secretary Salazar has ordered is a prudent step that will allow time for the Presidential Commission to complete its review of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and for immediate safety and environmental reforms to be implemented," said Abbey.  "Pulling back exploration plans and development plans and requiring them to be updated with new information is consistent with this cautious approach and will ensure that new safety standards and risk considerations are incorporated into those planning documents.  In the long term, we also need Congress to approve the Administration's proposal to fix the law that requires MMS to review exploration plans within a 30-day mandatory deadline."

Director Abbey's directive, which will be communicated to operators and lessees through a Notice to Lessees (NTL), will establish separate requirements for deep water and shallow water exploration and development plans.

Deep Water Exploration Plans and Development Plans

A six month deep water drilling moratorium implemented by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Sunday, May 29, currently prohibits drilling of new oil and gas wells in water depths greater than 500 feet.

Director Abbey's announcement today makes clear that after the deep water drilling moratorium, any new drilling must be under an exploration plan or development plan that takes into account new safety and environmental requirements and the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

Shallow Water Exploration Plans and Development Plans

Oil and gas operations in waters less than 500 feet deep may move forward if they satisfy new safety and environmental requirements identified in Secretary Salazar's report to the President.  Director Abbey's announcement today makes clear that any new drilling in shallow water must be under an exploration plan or development plan that includes information demonstrating compliance with the new safety standards.

Call for Congressional Action to Lift 30-Day Mandatory Deadline on Exploration Plan Reviews

Director Abbey will issue the exploration plan and development plan directive under his authority to ensure that operations on the Outer Continental Shelf are always conducted in a safe and workmanlike manner, to prevent injury or loss of life, and to prevent damage to any natural resource or the environment.  

Director Abbey also reiterated, however, that Congress should approve the Administration's proposal to provide MMS more time to conduct reviews of exploration plans.  Under current law, MMS is required to review exploration plans within 30 days.  In the oil spill response legislation submitted to Congress on May 12, the Obama Administration is proposing to change the 30-day congressionally-mandated deadline to a 90-day timeline that can be further extended to complete additional environmental and safety reviews, as needed.  

The Department of the Interior, together with the Council on Environmental Quality, is also conducting a review of MMS's use of categorical exclusions.

"The approach I am announcing today is not an ideal solution, but it is an interim strategy that MMS will employ until Congress fixes the law and until additional reform recommendations from CEQ and DOI are developed and implemented," said Abbey.

The Department of the Interior will be issuing a Notice to Lessees (NTL) describing the interim approach MMS will be taking on reviewing exploration and development plans.