query

Nope…the world needs oil.

Yup. I'm sure all the oil companies will wander away from many trillions of barrels of oil hidden in deep water reservoirs, with nothing more than a "aw shucks"

😉

pffft!
only reason the US is so pi55ed right now is because it's been brought home ( again ).

The entire surface of the planet could be covered in a layer of burning crude being spewed out of burst deep sea wells and "we" would still keep doing it. Greed will always outdo the survival instinct. Well at least until it's too late.

I reckon there'll be a moratorium everywhere for a little while and then it'll come back with way tighter regulation

I also don't think we've heard the last from the Deepwater Horizon spill. I read something about how the actual problem was way below the seabed and capping the leak will just push the problem deeper down, causing the entire oilfield to rupture, but it was from a slightly spurious source (random webmong)

I think the yanks have dropped a bit of a cod with this one. No company can guarantee there won't be an accident and no company is strong enough to go up against the US govt. The risk/reward of deepwater drilling in GOM has changed pretty profoundly. The difficulty is the yanks and the rest of the world still want the oil

They greatly fear that the integrity of the seabed is affected and that oil and gas will seep up through cracks.

They're gonna have to come up with a new and safer approach to extraction given the difficulties of capping at that depth when it screws up. And BP need some better standards for supervising their sub-contractors too. It's the US company Transocean who were responsible for the drilling and the failed blow-out preventer isn't it?

The oil spillage is a disaster, but the press seem to have forgotten that 11 people died in the explosion and that's a tragedy also.

They should be trying to find out why the BOP failed first.It was Transocean but it was specced to B.P standards i think

Steve Newman, chief executive of Transocean, placed the blame on BP – and Halliburton, the cement contractor – for a "sudden catastrophic failure" of the cement plug around the rig, or its casing, or both.
Halliburton answered to BP on the cementing, Mr Newman said: "Therein lies the root cause of this occurrence, without a disatrous failure of one of those elements, the explosion could not have occurred."
Tim Probert, from Halliburton which provided the cement for the rig, said: "I can confirm that the final cement plug was not set."
Meanwhile, Professor F. E. Beck, a petroleum engineering specialist, said it appeared that barriers designed to control what is known as a "kick" – where explosive gas enters the drilling well – had failed, leading to a "blowout" when gas shot to the surface, ignited, causing the explosion.

It is alleged that the BP representatives overruled the better judgment of the Transocean people and wanted to save time and money by not pumping heavy drilling fluid down the shaft before disengaging. Instead they were ordered to use simple sea water.

You see the results. Haliburton has no role in the disaster. Their concrete is still in place and still holding the failed blow-out valve in place. This may mean criminal charges against BP for manslaughter.

We've not seen the last of deepwater drilling.

Having worked in the industry both as an insider and more recently as a consultant, I take a bit of a different view of the situation. The US (and UK) government both have strong political motivations to extract their domestic oil reserves – doing so reduces dependance on unpredictable arab states and brings in serious tax revenue. They've hence encouraged companies with the skills to do it to drill increasingly difficult reservoirs. It's no exaggeration to say that deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is pushing the boundaries of what's possible. When Shell put the Brent platforms into the North Sea (then considered deep water), they compared the challenges to those being faced by the Apollo program at the time. It's still a reasonable comparison. Accidents will happen as you push the boundaries of knowledge. No one has yet provided an explanation, as far as I'm aware, for the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and to me it's timing suggests something out of the ordinary happened. Deep water forces drillers to tread a fine line with well control, probably giving little margin to deal with an unexpected problem.

It seems rather hypocritical to me that a government that has encouraged companies to drill in an inherently risky environment points the finger at BP when things go wrong. One could argue that given the risks and significant technical advances made in the Gulf of Mexico, the environmental safety record has been impressive.

Given our thirst for oil, and the fact that the US and UK's biggest new reserves are in deepwater in the Gulf of Mexico and west of Shetland, I can't see anything other than a short term halt to deepwater exploration.

did i miss this announcement ?

baws – be out of a job soon if they stop drilling deep water

BP are due to start a deep drilling project of the coast of Libya within weeks… So in response to the OP's query, nope.

Me too trail rat. Which would suck……I need money for bikes!

Really interesting – the question seems to be less whether it will continue and more what form it will take, whether it'll still be profitable if there are more safety regulations, and whether oil services companies will actually benefit from a more regulated environment on the basis that oil firms have to use their services more to ensure compliance

Didn't know abt the Shetlands – does the bulk of deepwater drilling then happen in the GOM?

to avoid saying anything i shouldnt – all im going to say is dont believe all what you read in the media – as with many cases its not entirely – if at all accurate and written to poison minds …

@ Jordie, the BOP being specced to a companys standards generally just means the size of ram packers etc, which are chosen depending on the petroleum companys chosen casing package and other variables. The maintenance will have been down to Transocean itself, although pressure tests etc will have to be signed off by a BP rep, these can be manipulated before they sign off the charts.

"it was specced to bp standards " which have changed considerably in a short period of time.

hope not ive got a range rover V8 to run.

"although pressure tests etc will have to be signed off by a BP rep, these can be manipulated before they sign off the charts. "

Bit of the old DJs on the decks 😉