BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s biggest mining company, is set to resume its drilling of a production well at its Shenzi oil field in the Gulf of Mexico after winning the second US deep-water permit since BP PLC’s spill last year.
“We are very pleased to be resuming work,” Kelly Quirke, a spokeswoman for Melbourne-based BHP, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The company joins Noble Energy Inc as the only drillers cleared to resume work by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement since BP’s April 20 spill last year.
Lawmakers have criticized the Obama administration for delaying domestic exploration as unrest in the Middle East pushes up oil prices.
BHP Billiton will use equipment from Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc in case of a blow out, Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Bureau, said in an e- mail on Friday.
“We are encouraging offshore exploration and production,” US President Barack Obama said during a press conference at the White House on Friday.
“We’re just doing it responsibly,” he said.
Crude oil in New York has climbed 23 percent over the past year. Futures have surged 11 percent since Jan. 14, when the president of Tunisia was ousted as protests rocked the Middle East and North Africa, including Saudi Arabia’s neighbors Yemen, Oman and Bahrain.
Prices touched a 29-month high of US$106.95 a barrel during trading last Monday.
Helix, which provided vessels that responded to the BP disaster, is able to collect 10,000 barrels of oil a day and cap a well in water as deep as 1,706m, Cameron Wallace, a Helix spokesman, said at the time Noble won its permit.
Oil production in federal waters of the Gulf, the largest domestic source of US crude, reached a record high last year, Obama said on Saturday.
The administration had stopped deep-water drilling after the BP blow out to assess companies’ safety and spill-response plans. The moratorium was lifted on Oct. 12.
BHP said on Feb. 15 that the lack of permits in the Gulf “was a major constraint on our business” and resulted in deferring “drilling of high volume production wells.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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