Robert Duvall won't be on board the ship that offloads Escopeta Oil's jack-up rig this week but he will be making a trip north once the company starts drilling for oil and natural gas in Alaska's Cook Inlet.
A long-time friend of Houston-based Escopeta President Danny Davis, the well-known actor and director is a staunch supporter of domestic oil and gas drilling.
"Alaska's got plenty of oil and gas that we need down here," Duvall said in an interview Thursday with Petroleum News. "It's preferable to importing energy from foreign sources, such as the Middle East."
Duvall would have been on board the vessel that is bringing the Spartan 151 jack-up rig into Cook Inlet, but he's about to start work on an independent film, "Jayne Mansfield's Car," directed by Billy Bob Thornton.
However, Duvall plans to visit the offshore rig once it starts drilling.
"I plan to support what Danny's doing up there, as well as get in a little fly-fishing," he said.
The Spartan 151 is expected to start drilling in late June in Escopeta's Kitchen Lights unit in upper Cook Inlet, which is thought to contain more than one large oil and gas field. It's the first time in more than a decade that a jack-up rig will be used in the Inlet.
The rig is coming from the Gulf of Mexico aboard a foreign-flagged vessel. Its transportation has been a contentious issue because federal law prohibits shipping cargo from one U.S. port to another on foreign-flagged vessels.
Escopeta has been trying to renew an earlier waiver of the law and also has recently applied for a new waiver at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of issuing such waivers.
Although Homeland Security, in a letter dated May 20 from Secretary Janet Napolitano, said no to a new waiver, it did not say what Escopeta executives feared most: that the rig would be confiscated or refused entry into the Inlet.
In fact, Napolitano made a point of acknowledging the energy needs of Southcentral Alaska in her letter to Davis, offering the services of Glen Vereb, director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Border Security and Trade Compliance division, to discuss "the facts and circumstances of the transportation of the rig that may be relevant to the mitigation of the Jones Act penalties that will likely result if your rig is offloaded in Cook Inlet."
A May 23 letter from Escopeta's Washington, D.C., attorney to Davis said members of the firm had met with Vereb, who confirmed that the ship could land and offload the rig in Cook Inlet without interference.
Escopeta's existing open-ended Jones Act waiver was granted by the Bush administration, which said that the drilling and development of the company's Cook Inlet oil and gas prospects was necessary for national security. Napolitano said that "unlike in past instances," the department did not find the waiver "necessary in the interest of self defense."
"Nevertheless, the Department of Homeland Security fully understands the energy needs of the Cook Inlet/South-Central region and therefore wants to work with" Escopeta to mitigate any penalties that would normally be assessed against the company, the secretary said.
Davis credits Napolitano's decision to the efforts of the three members of Alaska's congressional delegation, who recently met with her to plead Escopeta's case and explain the need for increased oil and gas production in Southcentral Alaska. That effort was initiated and led by Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska.
"I think the people of Alaska are some of the most fortunate people in the United States, having Begich, Murkowski and Young represent them in the fashion that they have in the last few months in trying to obtain a Jones Act waiver," Davis said. "No one could have better representation in Washington."
Escopeta's initial Jones Act waiver was secured by Republican Ted Stevens, former U.S. senator from Alaska.
When the rig arrives at the OSK dock in Nikiski, the Spartan 151's "home" in Alaska, Escopeta will add a 15,000-pound blowout preventer to it -- the largest blowout preventer ever employed in Cook Inlet.
By KAY CASHMAN
Petroleum News