Posted on 03/25/2013 9:51:40 AM PDT by thackney
Chevron struck oil in a well drilled more than 6 miles deep in a new field off the coast of Louisiana, the company said Monday.
Operating in 6,000 feet of water, Chevron drilled through a thick underground salt layer to find oil at a depth of 31,866 feet below sea level.
The well found 400 feet of net oil pay. Feet of net pay is a measurement used by oil companies to gauge the vertical thickness of the hydrocarbon-bearing area found in an exploration well.
The so-called Coronado prospect is located more than 190 miles south of Louisiana and is a part of a region dubbed the Lower Tertiary Trend, which is especially challenging to drill in because a thick underground salt layer makes seismic scans challenging to read.
“The Coronado discovery continues our string of exploration successes in the Lower Tertiary Trend, where Chevron is advancing multiple projects,” Gary Luquette, president of Chevron’s
North America exploration and production division, said in a statement. “It also highlights the importance of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico as a source of domestic energy for the United States.”
The Gulf of Mexico is one of Chevron’s primary worldwide focal points for its exploration and production program. The San Ramon, Calif.-based company started running a test well in February at another ultradeep-water location there, which produced at a high rate of 13,000 barrels per day.
The successful exploration effort announced Monday was Chevron’s second attempt to drill into the Coronado prospect after a 2011 attempt was abandoned. Drilling then was stopped because of “adverse drilling conditions in the shallow section of the wellbore,” said Russell Johnson, a spokesman for Chevron.
The company began its second attempt there in mid-2012, eventually reaching a total depth equal to the height of 22 Empire State Buildings, Chevron said.
Chevron holds a 40 percent stake in the well, with other owners including ConocoPhillips, with a share of 35 percent; Anadarko Petroleum Corp, with a 15 percent holding; and Venari Offshore LLC, with 10 percent.
Drilling through thick salt layers is especially challenging because of the difficulty in analyzing data and also because of the operations of ships that drill for miles underground, where they encounter extreme pressures and temperatures.
The cost of operating an ultradeepwater drillship to work in those conditions can exceed $600,000 per day.
Then leave it right there!
We still drill onshore. Far more wells are drilled each week onshore compared to offshore.
http://gis.bakerhughesdirect.com/RigCounts/default2.aspx
But offshore drilling of this level is “hunting elephants”. They spend the billions needed to bring a field like this into production with the expectation of a lot of oil.
Tough to find it you don’t drill.
Didn’t Hitler come up with creating synthetic fuel from coal during WWII to drive his war machine?
I do not believe the abiotic theory of oil production, in which oil is produced by natural, nonliving forces, nor the biotic theory of oil production, in which oil is produced by living organisms millions of years ago.
I am the believer, and founder, of the Exobiotic theory of oil production.
In my theory, oil is produced by advanced races outside our galaxy, and 'beamed' into the center of our globe.
Figure $1Million/hour for rig time for a deep water rig and all their personnel. 4 weeks = $672M
Sonic work prior and during with boats at ~ $2M once crew time is figured in.
Logging that deep a hole will run you easily $1M for one run with multiple tools - or at least when I logged for a few years in the 90s. Deepest I went was 26Kft and that was a nasty job that I fried a bunch of tools on.
But that’s a huge band of oil the most I saw was something like 50 ft.
Thanks Thack!
Since you obviously have alien contacts, would please ask them to steer more of those beams over towards Texas and away from the Middle East?
We have moon pies. We will gladly use them to pay for moon beams.
Yes, you are missing something. There is a magic temperature window for liquid hydrocarbons to exist. Too hot and the liquids are cooked to almost clinker and if you are lucky just leave gas. Too cold and all you have is kerogin and not enough heat in the kitchen to produce hydrocarbons in either liquid or gaseous form.
The indication of the magic temperature window is measured by what is called the vitronite reflectance level.
The GoM and other salt basins that are similar, like Brazil, are unique in having a hydrocarbon temperature and more importantly a liquid hydrocarbon window that is exceptionally deep because they are relatively cool. Salt and the insulating properties of that and the deep water make this possible. The temperature at the sea floor is pretty close to freezing. Temperature in the earth increases from that point at about 1 degree or so per 100’. There could be liquid hydrocarbons in the GoM as deep as 40,000 below sea level.
On land the liquid hydrocarbon window is exceeded at much lesser depths than in the GoM.
$15 million is only a good start on the actual cost.
When I was a kid I thought if I dug a hole deep enough I’d end up in China.
Yes he did. If it were economically viable, we'd do it too.
Much of the bombing conducted by the USAAF was aimed at cutting Hitler's oil supplies, therefore it became economically viable for them to work to convert coal into oil.
If coal to oil conversion is not feasible at $100.00 oil, I hope to never see the day when we need to do it.
There are promising technologies for conversion of natural gas into diesel fuel, and that will be interesting if they are able to do it economically.
We currently convert food into fuel, but that requires government mandates and subsidies in order to be considered economically viable. It is also sinful.
Yes, I’ve done accounting for people that invested large sums to drill where they were fairly certain there was oil, and lost their investment because there was none. When Obama gets up and says the greedy oil companies already have permits to drill on so much federal land but won’t, what his followers don’t understand is that the oil companies aren’t going to invest in drilling somewhere unless they’re fairly certain there’s oil there.
He didn’t come up with it. The process goes back to the 1920.
Germany did coal-to-liquids because they couldn’t get enough oil moved in during the war.
South Africa did coal-to-liquids when apartheid resulted in not enough countries willing to trade with them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process#History
I have more than alien contacts.
I have alien contact lenses.
Watch what happens when I put them on.
Missing a lot..............
Cool graphic..........
Ponder this...........
My cousin once opined...that bad earthquakes were the product of "us" taking too much oil out of the earth.
As that oil is the earths lubricant...
And it lubed the earth's faults, plates, etc.............
What say you?
I cannot say anything.
I'm choking with laughter.
Oil does not 'lube' the earth. LOL! Earthquakes have happened since time immemorial. Jagged rocks are not 'lubricated' by oil. That's like saying if you poured oil on a saw, it would no longer cut wood!!!
I dunno, I'm not that smart...But I thought it was a interesting redneck statement at the time...( 1970's )...but I've never forgotten it.
Wouldn't it be more like...if you didn't lubricate your saw..it would still cut wood??
I'm just a dumb ass Okie.......what you think?
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