But some petroleum industry experts maintain the technology for drilling deepwater wells is safe.
Compared with the development of deepwater wells below the salt off Brazil, this timeline is amazingly speedy.
Deepwater wells could be drilled in Mexican waters and their output tied in with the subsea pipelines on the U.S. side.
Third, we will continue the existing moratorium and suspend the issuance of new permits to drill new deepwater wells for six months.
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The technology exists to drill deepwater wells safely, and the Dept. of Interior has already suggested a host of sensible safety improvements.
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In this process, applications for re-permitting of exploratory deepwater wells will be examined and reviewed, and permits issued based on their ability to meet the requirements of a worst-case scenario.
As just one example, last week I spoke with John Schiller, chief executive of offshore driller Energy XXI, who used to drill a lot of deepwater wells when he was with Ocean Energy and Devon Energy.
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In Chevron's 50-story complex in downtown Houston, geophysicists are sniffing out the next generation of deepwater oil wells.
And four, we will suspend action on 33 deepwater exploratory wells currently being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Thirty-three additional wells were being drilled at deepwater depths.
The London-based company has lost more than a third of its stock-market value since April 20, when one of its gulf wells blew out, destroying the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing 11 men and triggering the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
On May 27, the Obama Administration announced a six-month moratorium on approving any new permits for deepwater drilling and further halted drilling at 33 exploratory wells along the Gulf coast during that same time.
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As of March 28, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcment (BOEMRE) of the Department of the Interior had received 31 deepwater drilling permit applications for offshore drilling activities like water injection wells and drilling from a fixed rig that were still allowed under the moratorium.
In contrast, with these ultradeep shallow water wells, Chevron is eyeing prospects that might be nearly as big as those deepwater finds.
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For years before Deepwater Horizon the oil industry planned on the basis that the blowout preventers on top of wells would live up to their name.
Surprisingly, life goes on in the deepwater, with the Mineral Management Service having unexpectedly approved a handful of permits to drill wells in waters even deeper than the Macondo prospect despite a moratorium on new drilling.
These wells may be deeper than anything BP has attempted in the gulf, but they are not in deepwater.
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