Thirteen oil companies have been authorized to resume deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico without submitting new plans for environmental review, the US Department of the Interior said on Monday.
However, the companies will still have to comply with tougher safety rules on offshore drilling that were put in place last year to try to avoid a repeat of the accident on a BP rig in April last year, which killed 11 workers and sparked a massive oil spill, the interior department said.
Companies that were already drilling in the Gulf of Mexico when a deepwater moratorium was imposed may be allowed to resume their activities without submitting new exploration or development plans for scrutiny.
“We are taking into account the special circumstances of those companies whose operations were interrupted by the moratorium and ensuring that they are able to resume previously approved activities,” US Bureau of Ocean Energy Mangement, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich said.
“For those companies that were in the midst of operations at the time of the deepwater suspensions, today’s notification is a significant step toward resuming their permitted activity,” he said.
The ocean energy bureau is the interior department agency responsible for overseeing the safe and environmentally responsible development of offshore energy and mineral resources on the US outer continental shelf.
The 13 companies the bureau notified are ATP Oil and Gas Corp, BHP Billiton Petroleum Inc, Chevron USA Inc, Cobalt International Energy Inc, Eni US Operating Co Inc, Hess Corp, Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp, Marathon Oil Corp, Murphy USA, Noble Energy Inc, Shell Offshore Inc, Statoil ASA and Walter Oil & Gas Corp.
The ban on deepwater drilling was lifted in October, five months after it had been imposed to allow the interior department and an expert panel commissioned by US President Barack Obama to craft new safety rules for offshore drilling.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained