Will Exxon's relocation of offshore rigs accelerate America's independence from oil?
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil has drilled 262 deep-water wells in the last 10 years. Thirty-five of them were in the Gulf of Mexico.
Joining top energy executives from BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson said at a U.S. House Energy Committee hearing that the company will send its deepwater drilling rigs to other parts of the world during the Obama administration's moratorium, according to a Bloomberg report.
Tillerson said:
We will redirect our human resources, the technical talent, to other parts of the world where we're allowed to work, and we will redirect the equipment elsewhere. This stuff is too expensive to let them sit around.
Surely when the moratorium is lifted, the oil companies will return, right? Wrong.
Once federal regulators allow deepwater drilling to resume, most of the rigs will be stationed elsewhere -- China, Indonesia and so forth -- and not prepared to move back, according to Brookshire Advisory & Research president Gianna Bern in the Bloomberg article.
So that begs the question: is the Gulf oil spill accelerating the United States' independence from oil as an energy source if offshore oil rigs won't come back?
Many have said the Gulf oil spill will be the catalyst for legislative environmental change. But that's based mostly on a political climate -- appeasing a population that is angry at energy companies for damaging the nation's shoreline, flora, fauna, tourism and fishing industries.
But what if the oil spill is a catalyst for change from a business perspective?
What would America do if the oil companies simply don't want to come back? Will it turn to cleantech, in the form of solar, wind and on-shore fossil fuels such as natural gas?
Clean technology is growing rapidly, but many companies large and small have expressed a wish for more federal incentives to facilitate the growth of the industry.
But if "Drill, baby, drill" is a no-go, and oil companies see America's shores as toxic to business, it seems their absence throws a wrench into the gears of the offshore drilling business -- thus altering the business landscape and perhaps providing a different kind of incentive for the adoption of green technology.
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