After a six-year dispute, natural gas producer Furie Operating Alaska LLC agreed in late March to pay the U.S. government $10 million in the biggest Jones Act fine to date.
In March 2011, Houston-based Escopeta Oil & Gas, Furie’s predecessor company, used the Chinese heavy-lift ship Kang Sheng Kou to move the drill rig Spartan 151 from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska. The jack-up rig, owned by Spartan Offshore Drilling of Louisiana, rounded South America and headed to Vancouver, British Columbia.
The same month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied Escopeta’s application for an extension of a previously issued Jones Act waiver to use a foreign ship to move equipment to Alaska’s Cook Inlet. The agency said U.S. barges could make the trip, citing information from the U.S. Maritime Administration. MarAd that month corrected itself, however, and said that U.S. vessels weren’t available. When Escopeta began transporting the rig, the company still hoped for a waiver or an extension of the one granted in 2006.
Escopeta was racing to get its rig north to qualify for Alaskan tax breaks on drilling that would expire in 2011. The company justified its actions by pointing to low fuel supplies in south-central Alaska, home to a military base and Anchorage International Airport.
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