Posted on 12/18/2013 10:27:27 AM PST by thackney
BP and ConocoPhillips said Wednesday they have made a significant oil discovery at the jointly owned Gila prospect in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico.
The Gila exploration well, about 300 miles southwest of New Orleans, is in nearly 5,000 feet of water and has total depth of more than 29,000 feet, pushing the boundaries of the latest offshore drilling technology with its high pressure and high temperature conditions.
The reservoir is BP’s third in the Paleogene system, where the company made its Kaskida and Tiber discoveries in 2006 and 2009. The Keathley Canyon, the site of the Gila discovery, was acquired in 2003. BP is the 80 percent owner and ConocoPhillips owns the remaining 20 percent share.
It is the fourth Paleogene find for ConocoPhillips, which also owns an 18 percent working interest in the Tiber, as well as a minority share in the Coronado and Shenandoah in the Gulf of Mexico’s Walker Ridge.
The companies plan to begin appraisal drilling to determine the size and commercial prospects for the discovery, but have already indicated that the find is ‘significant’.
Larry Archibald, senior vice president of exploration for ConocoPhillips, said the find shows the potential of the company’s conventional exploration program. “We have built a significant Gulf of Mexico deepwater acreage position and achieved success with discoveries at Tiber, Shenandoah, Coronado and Gila, validating our exploration strategy in the prolific Lower Tertiary trend,” he said.
BP says that regardless of the new discovery’s economics, it is another feather in the British company’s cap in the Gulf of Mexico, where it still battles the specter of the Macondo well explosion in 2010.
“The Gila discovery is a further sign that momentum is returning to BP’s drilling operations and well execution in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Richard Morrison, Regional President of BP’s Gulf of Mexico business.
BP also confirmed Wednesday the discovery of oil at the Pitu site in offshore Brazil, in a project where it plans to invest jointly with Petrobras, which is currently the operator. The discovery is about 30 miles off the coast of Rio Grande and is at a depth of more than 5,000 feet, Petrobras said in a written statement.
But the Brazil discovery will trigger write-offs of more than $1 billion for the British oil giant, the company said in a written statement. It will be required to write off $230 million for the higher costs of drilling the well relative to its value, as well as an additional $850 million, which is based on the amount allocated to the Pitanga well when BP acquired it in a 2010 deal with Devon.
It’s in the water, down drift from the Deepwater Horizon rig.
It is 24,000 feet below the sea floor.
I know. My post is a joke.
Now they're going almost three times as deep as that.
+5000 feet of water = 29,000 feet of drilling pipes = 5.5 miles!...........
For these wells to be profitable they have to produce a lot of oil.
Seems obvious to me that oil is a renewable resource that is continually created from deep within the earth. Old wells get replenished, new wells are found at fantastic depths, it's abiogenic and it's created in the crust.
BTTT!
Do you understand that oil is only found sourced to sedimentary basins, only where the rock is formed by material laid down from the surface?
Also do you understand oil contains microfossils and other biotic markers? Each field is individual enough that a sample of oil can be analyzed to show what field it came from, if it wasn’t blended from multiple sources.
Seems obvious to me that oil is a renewable resource that is continually created from deep within the earth. Old wells get replenished, new wells are found at fantastic depths, it's abiogenic and it's created in the crust.
I've had the same thought, especially since we landed a spacecraft on the surface of one of Saturn's moons that's covered with oceans of hydrocarbons. Titan is 50% larger (in diameter) than the Moon.
Did Titan have dinosaurs and rain forests? Seems unlikely.
and I'm by the Gulf
where is that “great environmental catastrophe” of the media called the BP oil spill now?
I thought the media said there would be decades of environmental damage and that a cleanup would continue for decades. more media lies like the global warming hoax.
I remember a FReeper claiming with six months 1/3 of all sea life would be dead.
But I do think that in time it will be shown to be so. But no one cares what I think.
Is there any basis to your opinion beyond wishful thinking?
There are many reason why it doesn’t make sense.
The idea has been around for over a century; you know that. I didn’t make up the concept. There have been “dead” wells that suddenly began producing again. Some oil deposits are surprisingly deep. I recognize that it is not widely accepted, and that there are reasons that argue strongly against it. I’m not pushing the idea on anyone, and I’m not trying to insult the currently accepted theory. I just side with the dissenting view.
So has perpetual motion machines and leprechauns.
There have been “dead” wells that suddenly began producing again.
There have a been a few, very few, wells in area with natural faults that have shown movement of oil from connected reservoirs, on the pressure was removed from one side.
Some oil deposits are surprisingly deep.
And always, absolutely always, sourced to sedimentary basin, material laid down from the surface. 1 inch per thousand years doesn't sound like much until you get to hundreds of millions of years.
I just side with the dissenting view.
I suspect, the more you learned, the less you would support that view. Don't worry about the oil formation, start with basic geology.
Oil contains two kinds of Carbon. One is organic and one is inorganic. Lots of the inorganic has been showing up lately.
” remember a FReeper claiming with six months 1/3 of all sea life would be dead.”
Probably a technically true statement, given the lifespan of a single plankton or algae, etc, that make up most of what is int eh ocean is pretty short.
Mind you, they have kids and replace themselves before death, but they are dead nonetheless.
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