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64 March 2013
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term purchase agreements – 20 years or more – are reached
with foreign buyers. Even so, Mr Krauss reported, at least 15
proposed terminal projects have filed regulatory applications
to export gas. If all are approved, they could export more than
25 billion cubic feet a day, equivalent to more than a third of
domestically consumed natural gas.
› If the rigorous federal regulatory permitting process were
not daunting enough, terminal builders also face stiff
resistance from advocates for the environment, who envision
a frenzy of shale drilling dependent on hydraulic fracturing of
hard rocks, which they claim endangers local water supplies
and pollutes the air.
Opponents have begun lobbying the Obama administration
to reject most of the planned terminals, and protests have
already occurred. Sounding another note, Dow Chemical and
some other big users of natural gas have expressed concerns
that an export boom could threaten to raise natural gas prices
for factories and consumers and, ultimately, kill American jobs.
A $1.4bn settlement ends a US
probe into the rig-owner’s role
in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill
disaster of 2010
“This resolution of criminal allegations and civil claims against
Transocean brings us one significant step closer to justice for
the human, environmental and economic devastation wrought
by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”
The devastation invoked by Eric Holder, the US attorney
general, of course derived from the drilling-rig explosion of
April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and
precipitated a flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from a
burst well. The settlement announced on 3 January of this
year, between the Justice Department and the owner of the
drilling rig, obliges Swiss-based Transocean Ltd to pay $1bn
in civil penalties and $400mn in criminal penalties and plead
guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water
Act.
A series of US investigations has apportioned blame for
the nation’s worst offshore oil spill among Transocean; the
London-based oil company BP PLC, which leased the rig
from Transocean; and other partners on the drilling project
including cement contractor Halliburton, the Houston, Texas-
based company which also has headquarters in Dubai.
The Deepwater Horizon was drilling in water a mile deep
about 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast when it
exploded and burned for some 36 hours before sinking. The
Justice Department claimed that Transocean crew members
on the rig, acting at the direction of BP supervisors, had failed
to fully investigate clear signs that oil and gas were flowing
into the well to the bursting point.
BP has already agreed to pay a record $4.5bn in penalties
and plead guilty to criminal charges related to the spill, but
the deal does not resolve civil claims against the company.
The first phase of a trial to identify causes of the blowout of
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