Page 19: of Marine News Magazine (October 2010)

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www.marinelink.com MN 19 regions. On May 30, 2010, the

Bureau of Ocean Energy

Management (BOEM), in accor- dance with Secretary Salazar’s direc- tion, issued a “Notice to Lessees and

Operators of Federal Oil and Gas

Leases in the Outer Continental Shelf

Regions of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific to Implement the

Directive to Impose a Moratorium on

All Drilling of Deepwater Wells,”

NTL No. 2010-N04 (NTL-4). NTL- 4 directed lessees and operators to cease drilling all new deepwater wells and refrain from spudding any new deepwater wells for at least six months. It also notified lessees and operators that no new permits would be issued during this time.

On June 8, 2010, the BOEM issued another notice to lessees, NTL-5, in which the BOEM advised all lessees of ten new safety measures that they must comply with. These new regula- tions applied to all activities on the

Outer Continental Shelf including the deepwater activities suspended under NTL-4 and shallow water operations that occur in less than 500 feet of water. This NTL requires operators to provide specific informa- tion to the government prior to the issuance of a permit. However, these hastily prepared regulations do not provide enough information to allow operators to comply with the requests. As such, operators are not able to obtain drilling permits for any offshore exploration because of the difficulty of complying with these new regulations.

On June 22, 2010, a federal judge enjoined the deepwater moratorium finding that the Department of

Interior may have failed to properly reason through its decision making process prior to issuing a blanket moratorium with facts developed during its 30-day review. Despite the clear pronouncement from the

Federal Court, later that afternoon,

Secretary Salazar issued a press release stating that he would be issuing a sec- ond drilling moratorium in the com- ing days.

On July 12, 2010, Secretary Salazar imposed a second moratorium and instructed the BOEM to direct the suspension of the drilling of wells using sub-sea blowout preventers (BOP) or surface BOPs on floating

LEGAL PERSPECTIVES