LOTUS

A federal judge in Louisiana has ordered an expansion of next week's sale of oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico, saying the Biden administration must include additional acreage, according to a court ruling issued late on Thursday.The oil and gas industry, which had sued the administration,  welcomed the decision to restore 6 million acres to the auction after the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management earlier reduced the area available for lease in an effort to protect an endangered whale.U.S. District Judge James Cain said the Interior Department must proceed with the lease sale by Sept. 30, the ruling said.

Nexans Marine Operations and the Norwegian shipbuilder Ulstein Verft have entered into a contract for the construction of a large DP3 cable-laying vessel, which will be an updated version of the Nexans Aurora vessel, delivered in 2021.The vessel is an ST-297 CLV design by Norway-based Skipsteknisk.Pascal Radue, Nexans EVP Generation & Transmission said:"We awarded the contract for a new vessel to Ulstein after an extensive tendering process, where Ulstein’s track record, including the delivery of Nexans Aurora, was important factors in deciding on the shipyard Ulstein Verft yet again.

The first big ship carrying grain from a Ukrainian Black Sea port has set sail since Moscow quit a deal in July to allow exports, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister said on Friday, part of Kyiv's campaign to break Russia's de facto blockade.The Aroyat "left the port Chornomorsk after loading 17,600 (metric tons of) Ukrainian wheat for Egypt," Oleksandr Kubrakov said on the X social media app, formerly Twitter.He posted a photo of the ship at sea. It was the second of two bulk carriers to leave the port this week using what Kyiv calls a new temporary humanitarian corridor. The first, the much smaller Resilient Africa, left on Tuesday, testing the route with a cargo of just 3,000 tons.

Sturgeon Bay, Wis. shipyard Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding on Wednesday began construction on a 289-foot service operation vessel (SOV) for a Crowley-ESVAGT joint venture that will house and transport technicians to maintain U.S. offshore wind farms.This Jones Act compliant vessel, for the joint venture CREST Wind, will operate under a long-term charter with Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy. The vessel is scheduled to enter service in 2026, when it will support the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project.“We are excited to get started on this important vessel,” said Marco Galbiati, CEO of Fincantieri Marine Group.

On a windswept island 50 miles north of Seattle sits a U.S. Navy monitoring station. For years, it was kept busy tracking whale movements and measuring rising sea temperatures. Last October, the Navy gave the unit a new name that better reflects its current mission: Theater Undersea Surveillance Command.The renaming of the spy station at the Whidbey Island naval base is a nod to a much larger U.S. military project, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans: conducting the biggest reconstruction of America’s anti-submarine spy program since the end of the Cold War.