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.
...
... middle of paper ...
...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.
On April 9, 1997, Rig 52 that belonged to Mallard Bay Drilling was towed to a location in the territorial waters of Louisiana, where it drilled a well over two miles deep. After the well was almost complete an explosion occurred killing four of the crew and injuring several others. Seeing that this was a marine casualty in navigable U.S. waters, under existing regulations the United States Coast Guard responded. When the investigation was over the Coast Guard did not find any violations of their regulations and noted it was an uninspected vessel and the operator held an Operator Uninspected Passenger Vessel (OUPV) license. Soon after the incident the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Mallard Bay Drilling for violations
...fund Site. EPA Cooperative Agreement #V-006449-01-N. U Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 2006.
World Book Advanced. World Book, 2014. Web. 12 March 2014. EPA.
as number one, and get back to the basics of feeling that the earth is one with us. If
Jane E. Sloan. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2011. 1205-09. SAGE Reference Online. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.
Texas has prospered with many business such as through the cattle, cotton, and technology industry to keep the economy on top. One business in particular has set Texas economy a part from all the other businesses. The oil and gas industry has significantly changed Texas economy from the first discovery in the twentieth century until this exact moment.
There are many other advantages to my humble proposal, such as having fewer issues to worry about and having the knowledge that we humans can harness Nature. As you all know, knowledge is power.
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).
EPA. (2009, December 29). Retrieved January 15, 2011, from Toxicity and Exposure Assessment for Children's Health: http://www.epa.gov/teach/
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.
There are three exploratory oil rigs that have been drilling under contract for several years along the Angola coast. Each oil rig owned by a United States drilling company. The case study focuses on a small oil rig called the “Explorer IV” housing 180 staff, 30 of these being American expatriate workers or “Expat”, and the top administrator in authority regarding life on the rig is an Expat himself. The purpose of the oil rig’s purpose is for drilling oil and to house all of the staff drilling and operating the rig. The rig is approximately 200 feet by 100 feet so cramped and tight living spaces is to be expected. However, there is a difference in living quarters, quality of food, medical care, and means of transportation between the Angolan’s and the Expats.
8) Brenner, Robert D. Testimony U.S. EPA before the Senate environment and Public Works Committee, August 1, 2000
The modern world of today runs on fossil fuels with crude oil being the live blood of industrialized countries. Though much of the twentieth century old was plentiful easily acquired and low in cost it has only been in the past thirty years that we have seen oil prices rise substantially. This can be attributed to many different reason. These price changes have challenged the industrialized world to become more creative with their techniques of both acquiring oil and using it.
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.
This technique fires hot chemical laced water deep underground, with the aim to break up subterranean rock and extract oil and natural gas from the hole. This method of extraction faces a lot of political opposition as well as environmental. Its true impact on the ground the oil is extracted on is not really known and it has been blamed for small earthquakes among other things. With an increasing focus on climate change more crude oil, which can impact the environment through emissions, is not without opposition on this front