New Offshore Subsea Record

Shell has set a new oil industry record by drilling and completing a subsea well in 9,356’ of water. This is the deepest well ever drilled. The location is 200 miles offshore. The well is part of the Perdido field development that will start production in 2010 at a rate of 130,000 barrels per day. The graphic will give you a chronology of the progression to deep water oil developments.

In case you wondered, this oil is brought to you courtesy of deep water royalty relief. That’s one of the domestic oil incentives that the Dems want to eliminate.

And for those of you who think the oil industry isn’t high tech, take another look. We don’t just send a little vehicle out to scoop a few samples of dirt and take a few pictures. This is like trying to thread a needle from a height of 10 feet. And we do real work down there. We set equipment weighing tons from miles away using remote tools and we set it within a few inches. That equipment then has to operate for years without being touched by human hands once it’s installed. In no other industry can you find a similar mix of brute strength, reliability and precision.