US offshore exploration reaching smaller frontiers

摘要

Houston—Deepwater exploration has not only ramped up in the past year or so, but is starting to encompass offshore areas that previously would have been considered unlikely candidates for oil and gas finds, international drillers have said in recent conference calls. Diamond Offshore, for example, has a semisubmersible rig scheduled to work offshore Latvia at an “increased” day rate from its current rate in the North Sea, while a second company rig will soon emerge from the Gulf of Mexico to head for Nicaragua, Diamond CEO Larry Dickerson said in his company’s quarterly conference call last week.