U.K. oil giant BP PLC (BP) has pushed back the start of its exploration
for oil in deep water offshore Libya for an unspecified period of time to
ensure all its plans are in order, but the company and the Libyan authorities
insist the drilling will be safe.
BP said it will proceed with its first deep water well offshore
Libya
some
time later this year. However, amid fears in
Europe
that
an accident similar to the oil leak in the
Gulf of Mexico
could
trigger an ecological disaster in the
Mediterranean
, the
company said it was prepared to mount a quick response to a large oil spill,
should one occur.
BP and the Libyan authorities have the resources to deal with a medium-sized
spill and should a larger incident occur BP has a contract with the world's
biggest oil spill response center, based in
Southampton
, in
the
U.K.
, said
company spokesman Robert Wine. "We would call them if they were needed in
Libya
,"
he said.
BP has pulled back from plans to drill the first Libyan well "within
weeks," a time frame that was still in place as recently as July. "We
were saying a few weeks ago we would start earlier, but making checks and
preparations and carrying out tests on the drilling plan and equipment has
delayed it," said Wine. "We are being thorough and making sure
everything is in order before we start."
BP did not directly link the delay to the disaster in the
Gulf
of Mexico
, but the company plans to publish preliminary
findings of its internal investigation into the blowout on the Macondo well in
late August. Any lessons from that inquiry will be applied to all international
operations, said BP spokesman David Nicholas.
The chairman of
Libya
's
National Oil Company, Shokri Ghanem, said BP's operations will have strong
oversight.
"We continually follow-up with companies and we are certain before
allowing any companies to start drilling onshore or offshore the environmental
procedures are followed exactly so that damage to the environment is
avoided," said Ghanem. "
Libya
has
well defined rules and regulations and there are severe consequences for
international oil companies that do not follow them."
Despite these assurances, BP's plans to drill at least five wells in the
Libya
's
Gulf
of
Sirte
at
depths greater than Macondo have some people worried.
Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italy's environment minister, told the Financial Times
earlier this month that plans for deep water drilling in the Mediterranean,
"give rise to serious concern."
"A moratorium could be a right approach for potentially dangerous
drilling...to give Europe time to define a new and specific strategy for the
Mediterranean especially in light of the risk exposed by the Deepwater Horizon
spill," Prestigiacomo told the paper.
Libya
is
already a major oil producer, but the bulk of that comes from onshore or
shallow water facilities. It has little experience supervising the risks of
deep water drilling. Despite the looming deadline for drilling to commence,
Libya
is
the only Mediterranean country aside from
Croatia
not
to have a contingency plan in place for handling an oil spill in its waters.
"At the moment, they haven't got any contingency plan adopted," said
Gabino Gonzalez, a program officer at the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency
Response Centre for the
Mediterranean Sea
, or
REMPEC, an independent international body. "But in recent months they have
been doing a lot of work on these aspects."
"They have quite a lot of equipment and resources available...up to a tier
two or three level of response. I'm quite confident they will do something
(about the lack of a formal contingency plan) in the coming weeks or
months," Gonzalez said.
Offshore oil spills are divided into three categories, or tiers, said Gonzalez.
A tier one incident is small and localized, such as minor spill from a ship
within a port. A tier two spill is larger and on open water, but contained
within the territorial waters of one country. A tier three spill is large and
may affect the territorial waters of several countries and require
international assistance, he said.
"If the oil spill is tier one it would be a small operational incident
that BP can deal with quickly and locally," said BP spokesman Wine. "Tier
two would need resources such as vessels and that would work with (Libya's
National Oil Company), and we've contracted (with a base in) Al Jouf which has
recovery equipment that can be sent out to the site of the spill."
"Tier three would be large and would involve Oil Spill Response," an
industry-funded company that maintains the stockpile of spill handling
equipment at locations all over the world, said Wine.
Oil Spill Response focuses on
Europe
, the
Middle
East
and
Asia
.
For a spill in Libyan waters, Oil Spill Response could rapidly deploy equipment
from its base in
Southampton
, said the company's duty
manager Marcus Mussell.
"We have a lot of gear designed so it can be rapidly transported in our
own aircraft. It would take a couple of hours to load then a four to five hour
flight," Mussell said. Significant resources, such as pumps, boom,
airborne dispersant systems and wildlife treatment centers could be on the
ground within 24 hours, provided they could get flight clearance from the
relevant authorities, he said.
roughl_� 0c����� 30,000 metric tons each.
"I'll believe it when I see it--I think they've got plenty of
gasoline," the gasoline trader said. "I'm not expecting anything [to
be booked] in August."
The tender would depend on whether PPMC gets cash from the Nigerian government
to reduce its outstanding debts by the end of August, another London-based gasoline
trader said.
"For now, I think we're going to see more payment delays," said
Akinola at Eurasia Group. "It's pretty clear that [NNPC is] financially squeezed."