Okay, I realize the people who operate this forum wisely decided to put a halt to political discussions for a while but a new federal drilling ban in the GoM is worth discussing considering that is an area that employees thousands of US mariners & hundreds of US flagged vessels. I’m not saying mariners should use this forum to unload on the politicians who want to pull the rug out from under them but they should be able to give us the pulse of the oilfield mariners since they are such a big portion of US mariner workforce.
Is it all doom & gloom in the GoM, a little slower or business as usual?
No harm/no foul. I see in the news the lawsuits have already started, which is to be expected.
I’d think there are enough active leases to keep things busy. I’m interested in the direction of this 60-day nonsense, and I too would be interested to hear the if there are any rumors on impending contracts, as I’ve not heard much lately.
Added note, I also wonder if this isn’t incentive for lease-holders to file their permits and grab a vessel contract on the chance the administration attempts to curtail things further.
As a practical matter, nothing has changed as there’s a stockpile of leases to be developed, and we need to wait and see. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
It’s not like offshore has been going like gang busters the last 4 years. As always, it will come down to supply & demand, and to some extent, lobbying and political interest. The real test will be what happens after the effects of the pandemic abate and demand returns.
I’m hoping the same as you. We all would hate to see laid off mariners or misplaced mariners/vessels from the GoM flooding other sectors due to lack of work. I remember being a GoM OSV guy & it sucked with all the ups & downs. I’ll trust the opinions of the guys working there trying to make the mortgage about what is going on compared to news articles or you or I with our hopes & expectations of what should happen. It’s only day 1, let’s see how it goes.
Yeah. That’s not to say that the green talk didn’t get my attention…because it did. It will fall upon the Republicans to treat climate change seriously for a change rather than simply be dismissive.
I hope that they look closely at causality, which is something that has received short shrift up until now.
A couple of years after leaving the GoM I came to a conclusion about most of the southern gentleman who work there. Many, perhaps a majority are environmentalists. At crewchange after coming back to work we always asked each what we did when we were off. The Cajuns always said the same thing. Went fishing, went hunting, went out on my boat, seeded a field to prep for hunting season, worked on my camp, stayed in my 5th wheel, dug a pond & all other sorts of outdoor activities. When I started working in NY Harbor the answer was mostly, “Nothing” or stayed around my house. Never heard a Cajun brag about beating a video game when they were off.
I think the people who work in the GoM love & enjoy the environment as much as anyone else. I don’t think cutting US oil production & laying mariners off will affect the amount of oil consumed & produced on the planet by a single barrel. The price of oil will go up a little more, Russia & OPEC will be thrilled because they will pickup the slack boosting their economies & ours will suffer. Global oil demand & supply are almost guaranteed to increase with or without American mariners defaulting on their mortgages. I feel bad for those guy & our industry, less maritime jobs for news graduates too.