quote:
The six-month moratorium on offshore drilling enacted by President Obama will idle 33 floating drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, the Louisiana Mid-Continent and Gas Association says.

The lease rates from those rigs run between $250,000 and $500,000 a day, meaning that rig operators could be losing between $8.3 million and $16.5 million a day combined. Add another $1 million or so a day for lost revenue to supply boat operators, welders, divers, transportation companies and other support services.

Factoring in rig crews and other secondary employment related to drilling, the association estimates that 800 to 1,400 jobs per rig are at risk. The lost wages could run as much as $10 million a month per platform, or as much as $330 million total.

The companies most affected by the moratorium include Chevron, with four rigs, the Woodlands-based Anadarko - which was also a partner in the well now spilling oil into the Gulf - with three rigs, and Marathon and Noble Energy with two each, the association says.

As staggering as the numbers are, it may not be the rig operators who are most affected. After all, as I noted in a recent column, they may simply move their rigs to other parts of the world. The trick will be getting them back when the ban is lifted.

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Posted by Douglas Quaid

Mars

Member since Mar 2010

4121 posts

Posted on 6/3/10 at 11:53 am to MSMHater

quote:
they may simply move their rigs to other parts of the world. The trick will be getting them back when the ban is lifted.

Ain't this the truth. There is plenty of work elsewhere, so operators aren't going to sit around waiting for months for the US "guvment" to get their shite together. Brazil is in the midst of a deepwater drilling explosion right now... pun intended I guess.

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Posted by jeff1545