Today’s Houston Chronicle has a pretty informative article on the search for hydrocarbons in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Complete with video, to boot. [Which has since been disabled for embedding. I encourage you to view the video at the linked website. - ed.]
A $1 million-a-day gamble in the Gulf
Major oil companies have focused particular attention on an ancient rock bed geologists call the Lower Tertiary trend, which runs miles below the sea floor in an outer rim of the U.S. Gulf between Texas and Louisiana.
Thought to be the biggest U.S. oil discovery in generations, Lower Tertiary fields are expected to help offset declines in shallow water fields and lift overall output of the Gulf of Mexico, which today accounts for about a quarter of U.S. oil production.
But the region also presents huge technical and cost challenges.
Not only are fields often found in waters 2 miles deep, but oil and gas deposits, buried under [thick] salt layers, are hard to detect in geologic surveys. Also, extreme temperatures and pressures in reservoirs test equipment. …
…[T]he odds of coming up empty remain frighteningly high, as do the consequences: Each dry hole is estimated to cost at least $100 million.
A couple of things to point out: many of the drilling contractors (rig owners) have chosen to domicile their businesses overseas for tax purposes. In this case, the contractor is Transocean, Ltd., formerly of Houston but now of Zug, Switzerland.
Also, one amazing aspect of the technology is dynamic positioning, which allows the drillship to maintain station even in heavy seas. Large computer-controlled thrusters on the vessel automatically maintain the vessel’s position in X-Y over a fixed spot on the mudline. Another system compensates for the heave of the vessel (Z) so that the vertical motion due to wave action does not impart vertical motion onto the drill string.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
Ain't creativity and innovation grand?!nt
jccbin (Diary) Friday, April 9th at 3:42PM EST (link)Forget the Gulf....
Marcus_Traianus (Diary) Friday, April 9th at 5:03PM EST (link)Imagine of Obama actually let us drill in the Baltimore Canyon Trough.
Problem is, that was excluded in his big “I am for offshore drilling announcement”.
See folks, little details matter and you should always read the fine print.
I am citing this from memory, but some of the old estimates were a yield of about 3.5 billion barrels (we are not even talking about gas). This can be confirmed by further exploration of some of the sub-salt formations- but Mr. Obama won’t allow that.
The importance? That trough is one of the few areas where geologic exploration was already done. That puts us probably five years ahead of any “potential” area where Obama has said he will allow “exploration” (if it ever happens at all).
So think of an Easter-egg hunt, when you know where the eggs are but Congress won’t let you look there until you have searched everywhere else.
When the price of oil starts to increase again, our dependence on foreign oil rises and the “crisis” returns- send Mr. Obama and the Democrats a big thank you card.
“Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object—the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers; the other, by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.”.Thomas Jefferson
yes but the cost of exploration never comes up when the
kyle8 (Diary) Saturday, April 10th at 7:34AM EST (link)Democraps start talking about our “obscene” profits.
There was an environmentalist jack off on the O”reilly Factor last night who was so damn ignorant. He actually said “it is time that Oil companies pay royalties when they drill on government land,”
Yeah dumbass your about forty years late on that one, royalties and taxes, LOTS of taxes.
Then this idiot said that offshore drilling was a hazard to the fishing industry. Anyone who has ever lived near the gulf of Mexico can tell you that oil rigs are the very best places to catch fish.
“Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty”
Kyle
DP is great . .
ofsneocon (Diary) Sunday, April 11th at 2:06PM EST (link)Unitl it concks out on you. We were pumping fluid to a DP work boat when the DP suddenly went out and the boat took off with our lines still hooked up to it. By the time we noticed, we had nearly parted the line.
DP is great . .
ofsneocon (Diary) Sunday, April 11th at 2:06PM EST (link)Unitl it concks out on you. We were pumping fluid to a DP work boat when the DP suddenly went out and the boat took off with our lines still hooked up to it. By the time we noticed, we had nearly parted the line.