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Chevron green lights Orphan Basin drilling (http://looncanada.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/chevron-green-lights-orphan-basin-drilling/)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/506/Stena_carron2r.jpg

Undaunted by the world’s largest environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and BP’s failure to contain the expanding slick, Chevron Canada Ltd. will today forge ahead with offshore oil drilling on Canada’s deepest offshore well in the ominously named Orphan Basin, about 270 miles northeast of the coast of Newfoundland.

With an air of overconfidence not seen seen the RMS Titanic weighed anchor for its maiden voyage a century ago, David MacInnis, Chevron Canada’s vice-president of public affairs and public policy blithely told the CBC yesterday that it was all systems go on Canada’s answer to the Deepwater Horizon project:

We did a complete review top to bottom — the systems, the equipment, the processes, the people and the skills that were in place. We didn’t need to make any changes, but it’s something that on an ongoing basis we’ll review and monitor.

Chevron will start drilling today at the Lona O-55 prospect in depths of up to 1.5 miles. In the same teststosterone-driven climate that spurred BP and its Transocean platform subcontractors in the Gulf of Mexico, Chevron Canada’s website boasts that “the water depth, at 2,600 metres, will set a new record for offshore wells drilled in Canada.”

The drilling will be carried out the Stena Carron drillship, described as “a harsh-environment, dynamic-positioning, deepwater drillship capable of drilling in water depths up to 3050 metres.” The initial exploration well, the website states, “will take several months to drill and evaluate.”

Chevron Canada’s partners, romantically described as “co-venturers,” are ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Limited and Shell Canada Energy.

According to Chevron Canada’s MacInnes: “Using the Stena Carron, which was specially designed for this environment, we know we’ve got the right equipment”, adding that “there will also be plenty of supervision on board…[Read More] (http://looncanada.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/chevron-green-lights-orphan-basin-drilling/)

From posted link: According to that hyperlinked cyberpropaganda, the “Scientific and Environmental ROV Partnership using Existing iNdustrial Technology” (SERPENT) project aims to make cutting-edge industrial ROV (robot operated vehicles) technology and data more accessible to the world’s science community, share knowledge and progress deep-sea research.”

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Chevron and the rest of the "co-venturers" are so determined to go forward with a this type of drilling off the shores of Newfoundland that they will risk the same fate that their SERPENT partners (BP) have inflicted upon us in the Gulf. If they were concerned about marine ecology as their PR departments claim, they would have their asses out there in the Gulf assisting with every possible resource available in their inventory, they would be learning from the mistakes made by BP. At no time will they ever get a more realistic class in emergency clean up techniques. Every person on their payroll should be out there doing what they can to help.

Having a ship ready to drill a relief well is not a safe approach to an ill planned technique that we know has failed miserably. Another well increases the odds of more failures.

Not drilling until we know more about the effects of deep underwater pressures on the equipment used to convey this oil and gas is the ONLY safe approach to future drilling.

Obviously corporate oil scientists and our regulators screwed this up horribly in the Gulf allowing inferior safeguards to be implemented as sufficient. How can we allow more short sighted projects like this, ruin our Earth? :mad: - Dale