Source: Shell.com
Oil companies are drilling in deeper waters as they seek out new locations to replace depleting wells. Look no further than the Gulf of Mexico where Shell has set a global record by producing oil from a well 9,627 feet below the surface. Not bad eh? At that depth, the well is deeper than 6 Empire State Buildings standing tall.
The Perdido (meaning “lost” in Spanish) drilling and production platform is operating about 200 miles Southwest of Houston and is considered to be the world’s deepest offshore drilling and production platform. While there is no specifics on the platform’s production, Shell has acknowledged that the Perdido platform’s daily capacity is 100,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas.
British Petroleum (BP) showed the world the danger of deepwater drilling when an explosion on the Deepwater Horizion led to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for 3 months that proved to be an environmental disaster along with a PR disaster. The dangers of deepwater drilling lies in the fact that the whole operation is based on robots, large amounts of pressure and lower temperatures. In BP’s case, it relied on robots to fix a problem that was 5,000 feet below the surface.
In Shell’s case, it is developing technology that will allow it to drill deeper. It also has to develop technology that will push oil up 2 miles as the reservoir’s pressure was low.
”The industry is moving into these depths,” he said. ”As the industry expands the frontier, it is going to have to come up with solutions like this.”Shell spokesman Jaryl Strong said. (source)
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