Today the Wall Street Journal featured an article on Big Oil’s expensive gamble in deep water drilling through up to five miles of rock under over 4,000 feet of water. As a result of limited access to world reserves (Middle East, Venezuela, Russia) and aging current fields, companies such as Chevron and BP are investing billions of dollars in new oil-exploration fields. The investment is paying off as these big companies discover large quantities of oil, which only they have the technological and financial backing to pursue.
It is easier to appreciate the technological difficulties of hitting the reservoir payload when the article compared the successful drilling of the Chevron well named Tahiti to a dartboard, “That well needed to hit a 200-foot-long target from five miles away — akin to hitting a dart board from a city block away.”
These fields are located in the Gulf of Mexico but also off the coasts of Brazil and Ghana. Even more significant, experts speculate of a massive oil reservoir spanning across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America, which could be good news for the rest of us. As the demand is projected to increase with the surge of second and third world population needs, the world will need additional fuel to maintain the energy supply. At least until alternative energy sources make a significant contribution to the supply volume and energy demand becomes more controlled.
In the meantime, while we wait for additional large oil findings, we applaud the efforts of companies investing in the advanced technology and taking the financial risks in these billion dollar capital projects.