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February 2011

Vol. 16, No. 6 Week of February 06, 2011

Begich pushes for Jones Act waiver

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, is asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to grant Escopeta Oil a waiver of the Jones Act in order to get a jack-up drilling rig to Cook Inlet.

Escopeta got a Jones Act waiver in 2006, on a previous attempt to bring a rig to Alaska.

As Escopeta once again prepares to bring a rig to Alaska, the company asked the federal government for an assurance that the 2006 waiver is still valid, but in November, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection called the waiver “neither open ended nor transferrable.”

Because that answer left the matter somewhat up in the air, Begich asked the Department of Homeland Security to issue the waiver now so Escopeta can bring the rig up this year.

The Jones Act requires goods moving between U.S. ports to be carried on ships flagged and built in the U.S., but the heavy-lift vessel Escopeta plans to use to move its Spartan 151 jack-up from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska is a foreign vessel.

Without a waiver, Escopeta would be forced to pay a fine. Rowan, the last company to operate a jack-up rig in the Cook Inlet, chose to pay the fine rather than get the waiver.

Buccaneer Alaska, another company looking to bring a jack-up rig to Alaska this year, hopes to avoid the Jones Act by purchasing a rig currently cold stacked in Malaysia.

—Eric Lidji






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