This is the Louisiana Deepwater, or at least a portion of it. The Shelf edge is visible at the top of the detail, and this section abuts the detail shown on the page titled The Shelf.
Deepwater operations are very expensive and replete with technical challenges. Wells are drilled from floating drilling rigs or drillships. Rental of such a vessel costs the lease owner $500,000 to $700,000 per day. A producible well might easily cost in excess of $100 million (for just the well -- not the processing facilities, pipelines, etc.), roughly ten times the cost of a typical Shelf well.
Since fixed platforms are out of the question, new technology had to be developed. In many cases, the wellheads are installed on the seafloor, with the production flowing by pipelines to a floating most for processing. Several examples are shown in this brochure of a major deepwater service company.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Deepwater 2
Offshore GOM 101
