08/28/09 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Where is the future of the oil industry? Offshore driller Transocean just took delivery of a new ultra-deep-water drilling ship named Discoverer Clear Leader. This sixth-generation drill ship is currently under long-term contract to Chevron.
The new vessel is 835 feet long and 125 feet wide, or about the size of a World War II aircraft carrier. It generates 40 Megawatts of power, enough to light about 40,000 homes. The derrick is 226 feet high. The ship can drill wells in 12,000 feet of water, which is the depth of seafloor where the Titanic sank. The ship can operate and hold its position steady in waves up to 30 feet high.
Clear Leader can drill to a total depth of 40,000 feet, which surpasses the limits of any previous technology. By comparison, almost no airliners fly above 40,000 feet altitude. So imagine flying across the country and looking down at the ground from, say, 36,000 feet. Now imagine you’re on a ship at sea, dangling a drill string that goes farther than that into the earth.
If you want to see an excellent animation of deep-water drilling from Transocean, here’s a nice visual demonstration that gives you a perspective on what it’s all about…
I hope you can see why the deep-water developers, and equipment and service suppliers, are such a unique brood. There are just so few of these kinds of companies out there, and it’s such a difficult technical field. But deep water is where the ‘big’ oil is being found these days (along with unconventional plays like oil sands). So for investment purposes, we need to follow the oil.
Byron King
Byron King is the managing editor of Outstanding Investments and Energy & Scarcity Investor. He is a Harvard-trained geologist who has traveled to every U.S. state and territory and six of the seven continents. He has conducted site visits to mineral deposits in 26 countries and deep-water oil fields in five oceans. This provides him with a unique perspective on the myriad of investment opportunities in energy and mineral exploration. He has been interviewed by dozens of major print and broadcast media outlets including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, MSN Money, MarketWatch, Fox Business News, and PBS Newshour.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
Thanks for the love byron. I work for a company that makes the sensing equipment that goes down into these wells to determine the pressure, temperature and flow of the wells.
Its amazing stuff and the people who design, engineer, manufacture, install and operate this technology are among the best in the world.
And the best part is, they’re mostly Americans.
This is the sort of long odds crap shoot we must resort to. Good luck with it. I do notice that you have not arrogated the recommendation of investing. Slight, the saving grace.
Billy,
I suppose that haven,t see all the oilfield in the world as it by far no longer dominated by USA technology. If you look around you find lot,s of european, japanese and even chinese technology around. It is nice to be pro american but pls look at the facts as well.
Pieter