It is just me or are these oil rigs having an unusually large amount of fires recently?

Is this normal? I only ask because oil prices hit $140 and supposedly one of the main factors for this new rise is a drilling rig fire.

One of today's headlines talks about the rise in oil prices due to an overnight fire at a StatoilHydro ASA drilling rig in the North Sea:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080616/oil_prices.html

Also supporting prices was an overnight fire at a StatoilHydro ASA drilling rig in the North Sea, which could affect as much as 150,000 barrels of daily oil production, said Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Conn.


I honestly don't know how common these are, but they seem to happen quite a bit as of late:

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http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=53865

On December 6, 2007, the PSA established a group to investigate the fire on the semisub Songa Dee on December 4, 2007.

The fire on the rig, which is operated by Stena Drilling, resulted in the evacuation of the entire crew with the exception of the safety crew. The facility emergency preparedness center also had to be evacuated due to the smoke. The PSA considers the incident very serious.

The mandate of the investigation group is to clarify the scope, development and potential of the incident and evaluate trigger causes and underlying causes for the fire occurring. The group, which consists of three experts from the PSA, will, in addition to evaluating how Stena Drilling's emergency preparedness organization functioned during and after the fire, also identify any breaches of the regulations.

Songa Dee was drilling on the Troll field when the accident took place and is contracted to StatoilHydro. The drilling installation is owned by Songa Offshore.

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http://www.marketintelligencecenter.com/article.aspx?story=514875&s=5656

January 23, 2008 2:17 PM

StatoilHydro ADR (STO) opened at 24.00. So far today, the stock has hit a low of 23.68 and a high of 24.73. STO is now trading at 24.05, down 2.04 (-8.50%). The stock hit its 52 week high of 35.56 in October and set its 52 week low of 23.68 today. STO climbed for most of the past year, but has been slipping since October. StatoilHydro announced today it closed its Mongstad oil refinery after a fire broke out. The company didn't say when the plant would be back in operation.

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http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/02/04/fire_shuts_down_norwegian_oil_platform/

February 4, 2008

OSLO, Norway—A gas turbine fire shut down production from the 20,000 barrel per day Norwegian offshore oil field Njord A on Monday, without causing injury to the platform's 91 crew, the StatoilHydro ASA oil company said.
more stories like this

Gisle Johanson, a spokesman for the government-controlled company, said the fire was quickly brought under control and that the situation returned to normal after about 30 minutes. He said the cause of the fire and the extent of damage were not immediately known.

"I can't say how long production will be shut down," Johanson said by telephone. The Norwegian Sea field's production of 6 million cubic meters (212 million cubic feet) of natural gas was also stopped by the fire.

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March 27, 2008

StatoilHydro has temporarily shut down its Snoehvit LNG plant at Hammerfest in the north of Norway following more problems with water-cooling pipes, daily business paper Dagens Naeringsliv reported Thursday morning.

"We have discovered a leak, and it is of course not desirable, but we must expect this in the start-up phase," said Snoehvit information officer Sverre Kojedal to the newspaper.

The Norwegian oil giant has already said that it expects Snoehvit to produce at about 60 percent of total capacity until 2009.

"I would not be surprised if there will be more (incidents)," Kojedal said. "We cannot guarantee that there will not be more occurrences."

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http://www.downstreamtoday.com/(X(1)S(zhipa155slapilnqmkxk5vba))/News/Articles/200805/StatoilHydro_Reports_Fire_At_Danish_Refi_11122.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Friday, May 30, 2008

Norwegian oil and gas producer StatoilHydro ASA's Kalundborg refinery in Denmark has been hit by a fire and there could be some impact on production, a company spokesman said.

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So what's going on here?

is VERY sensitive to price.

as fears of loss of production can then be used by the speculators to drive the price higher.