Offshore Drilling
What is it?
Drilling for oil in the ocean is one of the greatest technological breakthroughs in recent decades, and many new techniques have been developed to profit from the abundance of oil underneath the ocean floor. While drilling for oil has been around for hundreds of years in one form or the another, the effective extraction of petroleum from beneath the sea floor did not surface until the last forty years. The search for oil often turns out to be unproductive, but this practice is vital for the economic future of many nations.
In order for any drilling to take place, an offshore drilling rig must first be installed. These offshore platforms can be situated in water up to a several hundred meters in depth. But before any drilling takes place, an oil and gas "trap" must first be located in the ocean, and with the ocean floor being at such great depths, the visibility is often very poor. To locate potential traps, engineers use seismic surveying, and then analyze the data they receive to decide whether or not drilling in the area would have the chance of containing oil and/or gas. The engineers will not know whether their assumptions are true until they penetrate the trap with a drill bit. Due to the fact that the traps can sometimes be a great distance below the ocean, advanced computer technology is required to guide the drill bit to a fixed location. Installed above the drill bit is a navigation device, which sends back information to the controller, allowing them to locate the exact location that is presumed to have the oil and to measure and monitor the trap. Inside the drill pipe, there is a steerable motor that can be controlled to adjust the drill and the direction in which it is headed.
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...ould be less tension between the federal government, the oil companies, environmentalists, and the public. More importantly, we would be following the process theology and respecting nature, which is what God wants us to do.
References
Offshore Drilling Page. 1999. Gulf Coast Environmental Defense. <http://www.southerncitizen.org/gced/articles/no_rigs/10_15_97dp.html> <http://www.southerncitizen.org/gced/articles/no_rigs/battle.html>
Offshore Drilling. Odyssey Magazine n° 1. <http://www.elf.fr/odyssee/us/mag/mag01/fmer.htm>
Offshore Drilling. Australian Institute of Petroleum. <http://www.aip.com.au/education/projects/pt_offshore/>
Bright, Thomas J., Thompson, Jack H. Research Product. 21 Jan. 1980. 24 Jan. 1980 <http://www.epa.gov/ged/publica/c1410.htm>
Barbour, Ian. Ethics in an Age of Technology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Notice: Although this work was reviewed and by EPA and approved for publication, it may not necessarily reflect official Agency policy. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by EPA for use.
British Petroleum (“BP”) is the company that is being blamed for the incident. Employing 80,000 people, BP is an international oil company that puts different technology to use for finding oil and gas under the Earth’s surface. One of the oilrigs, Deepwater Horizon has drilled 35,000 ft. making it to be the deepest drilling of oil and gas (Walsh). Deepwater Horizon was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico about 52 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip. After the explosion, helicopters searched for 11 crewmembers that reported missing. 17 people were injured (BP Internal Investigation Team). A day later, the rig was found upside down (BP Oil Spill Timeline). The cost to clean up the damage is approximately $760 million (Walsh).
To extract such oil from under the Great Lakes, we would need to use directional drilling. To do this, the well is first drilled vertically, and then it is angled under the lakes at about four thousand feet to in fact reach the oil. This is a complicated process that had improved due to technology over the past twenty years.
8) Brenner, Robert D. Testimony U.S. EPA before the Senate environment and Public Works Committee, August 1, 2000
United States Environmental Protection Agency. United States Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 4 July 2011
Crude oil is formed within the Earth’ crust and within ocean basins. An ocean basin is a “depression of the earth’s surface in which an ocean lies”. As plants and animals die and remain at the bottom of the ocean they turn into fossils.
...red by mud and silt. The silt and mud lays into rocks leaving the organic matter caught between layers of rock. As more silt and mud is laid down, more layers of rock are added on the organic matter layer. The extra weight of the rocks and some heating from beneath the organic material are helping to drive out water which includes oxygen in it. Then the oil comes up through porous rocks until it does hit a nonporous rock and there it stays to be collected. So to extract the oil we have to then use a drill to find the oil, and to find oil over the ocean we use the same concept and use a drilling rig to take out the oil. So to extract the oil we usually pump down some steam, the steam then pushes the oil up out of the ground. But there is places which are very cold and there is oil in the ground we have to then pump down a warm steam to make the oil really comes up.
As the head of Shell Oil Company, Marvin E. Odum argues for the expansion of offshore drilling in his article; making claims for the benefit of the United States. His article covers the fact that America has become highly dependent on imported oil from foreign countries and that this is no help to the economic crisis of today. With a few facts for backup, Odum discusses the benefits that the expansion of offshore drilling will bring to the United States. Being the president of Shell Oil, his credibility on the topic is undeniable, as he makes his argument for expansion.
Offshore oil drilling has had so many issues recently. It is time to put a stop to it before we completely poison our oceans. So much environmental damage has occurred from this act. The actions being Many people do not support it and think that we need to protect our oceans.
This paper describes equipment and techniques for responding to oil spills. Various techniques for the containment, cleanup and recovery of oil spills are examined; advantages and disadvantages of each are considered. Along with providing insight for oil spill response, this paper discusses environmental factors which can contribute to the success or failure of a cleanup operation.
The Arctic Circle is a snowy paradise that harbors diverse species and beautiful landscapes. It also happens to be home to an estimated thirteen to twenty-five percent of the world’s undiscovered crude oil, averaging out to about 90 billion barrels of oil (Gerkens, 2014). Alaska in particular is home to one of the largest sources of oil in the United States. Underneath the barren land and icy waters is thought to be over 412 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. A majority of these fossil fuels are located in North Slope, Alaska and in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off the coast of Alaska. However, reaching this fuel can be quite difficult and perilous. Drilling on land is strongly protested and drilling in the ocean can be treacherous. There are pros and cons to drilling for oil in the Arctic and the effects of drilling could be positive or negative. (Dlouhy, 2014)
According to the magazine “Oil in the Sea” by Nancy Rabalais “Seventy-five million gallons of oil end up in the ocean every year” (Rabalais 1). When oil reaches the ocean, it is extremely difficult to clean and remains in the ocean for long extended periods of time. It gets into the ocean in many different ways so as of now it is hard to control and stop it. Oil in the ocean comes from human activity and cracks in the ocean floor. According to Joeli Veitayaki, Associate Professor and Head of the School of Marine Studies who has his PhD in Environment and Development says, “Waste oil from some commercial operators is being disposed of in environmentally damaging ways that cause irreparable damage” (3). This shows that oil is being used irresponsibly and should have restrictions on its uses in the ocean to help prevent more marine deaths from happening. When oil miners look for oil, they fire soundwaves at the bottom of the ocean which causes hearing damage and death to marine life. To help save marine life, restrictions should be put on how oil is used in and around the
With the United States drilling off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico, totaling the May of 2015 census of oil rigs worldwide marking 213 of them being located in the gulf. With that many rigs being in the gulf there is destined to be spills of oil and natural gas. In the time between 1969 to 2010 there were 15 oil spills in the Gulf and the neighboring waterways. On the other hand on soil rather than in the water coal mining is also becoming a larger issue than what it was back in the 1920’s. While coal is produced differently than oil is the process that uses coal to produce energy has become more and more harsh on the global environment. Coal is, “formed when dead plant matter submerged in swamp environments is subjected to the geological
The main problems encountered by Mobil Oil were reduce costs and to improve the management layers. Issues that related to customer service included a lack of understanding of customer needs, poor business process and dysfunctional teamwork. Issues relating to employees were the personal development and reward/recognition systems. And to due with this, was created a project with the objective to redesign and simplify business activities and workflow.
In 2009, the filmmaker Josh Fox set out on a journey to discover the harmful risks of natural gas drilling. His property,sitting on a huge reservoir called marcellus shale field, is recognized for its abundance of natural gas. The energy policy act of 2005 exempts natural gas drilling from certain environmental regulations. This act incentivized the oil industry to invest more on natural gas. For this reason, natural gas development has altered the lives of many people. For example, there was a scene that demonstrated the the extent of the contamination. People’s houses became so contaminated with natural gas that their water caught on fire. And in other cases, the exposure to natural gas lead to spike in health problems. Preliminary studies