Libya will allow BP to begin drilling in its offshore deepwater region next month, despite the extensive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the head of Libya’s National Oil Co. said Sunday.
Shokri Ghanem, who serves as Libya’s de facto oil minister, said the April explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and the subsequent spill, were “tragic,” but the oil industry is moving into “new frontiers.”
“An accident will not stop us from digging in this new frontier,” Ghanem said. “Life must go on, but we will learn a lot of lessons.”
Ghanem’s comments are the latest confirmation by the OPEC nation that it was planning to honor the contract it signed with BP in 2007 to drill in the Libyan deepwater region of the Mediterranean Sea.
BP has been battling sharp criticism over the incident, which left 11 workers dead and millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
The company has been struggling to contain the spill, but measures implemented so far have failed to stanch the flow of oil that has been washing ashore across the Gulf Coast and creating an environmental nightmare in the region.
Ghanem said that drilling at such a depth makes it difficult to know exactly what is happening.
“Accidents happen all the time. If an air crash takes place, we don’t stop air traffic,” he said. “So we have to continue, but we take this step to learn more lessons.”
[mappress]
Source: Theassociatedpress, June 28, 2010