1300 FATHOMS

摘要

There's a lot of oil lying under the sea that can feed the needs of the modern world, but developers will have to go into ever-deeper waters to retrieve it. And reaching it requires more than just using a longer pipe. Shell Oil has produced its first oil and natural gas from the world's deepest offshore drilling and production facility, the Perdido development, in the Gulf of Mexico about 250 miles south of Houston. The Perdido platform sits in approximately 8,000 feet of water, and will access reservoirs deep beneath the ocean floor. Perdido is designed to produce hydrocarbons from not one, but three, oil fields. Perdido is a test laboratory for newly developed equipment and technology never used before. However, unlike a real laboratory, failed experiments cannot be tolerated. Perdido offers a model for other Shell and other oil companies to follow in coming years as they develop more fields in this emerging deepwater area known as the Lower Tertiary trend.