We can certainly expect public demands and political pressure to scale back drilling off our shores, which will only serve to exacerbate the coming gap between supply and demand.
It has already prompted California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to abandon his push to expand regional offshore drilling, and caused pressure for U.S. President Barack Obama to suspend his recently announced plans to expand federal offshore drilling.
Republican leaders see political opportunity in the run up to November elections, vowing to continue applying pressure on Democrats on offshore drilling.
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Its customer base comprises four of North America's largest providers of pressure-pumping services to the drilling industry: Baker Hughes Inc.
The plaintiffs claim that BP put profits before safety, and the oil leak happened because drilling was rushed due to pressure from management to cut costs.
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When the heavy drilling mud that provides the pressure needed to keep things from coming up the well was removed, first as a test, then as part of a procedure for closing down the well and moving the rig, telltale signs that something was wrong were missed.
During the pumping and displacement of the heavyweight spacer used to displace the mud, a breach in pressure integrity resulted in the undetected loss of drilling mud into the probably uncemented well-bore.
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The friction caused by the gas bubble pushing up the pipe and displacing the drilling mud used to control the pressure could have created a static charge that ignited the gas into a fireball.
Fracking involves drilling a borehole before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas.
Directional drilling, bits, submersible pumps, pressure pumping, oilfield chemicals (which is about to be huge, as shale wells get frakked)--they do it all.
In Q3, the firm reported a 2% sequential drop in revenues and an 18% drop in operating income, primarily due to weak drilling in North America and an oversupplied pressure pumping market.
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For this quarter, the firm expects profit margins from the region to be between 8.5% and 9.5%, down from around 11.7% in Q3 due to its heavy exposure to the oversupplied pressure pumping market and a decrease in land based drilling demand.
In the beginning, drilling assemblies melted in the extreme heat and pressure.
Jim Noe, general counsel of shallow-water drilling contractor Hercules Offshore defended shallow-water drilling, saying such projects tap relatively low-pressure reservoirs, making blowouts less likely.
At the bottom of the Knotty Head hole, the 450-degree-Fahrenheit temperature and the pressure (2, 000 times atmospheric) would crush or melt most drilling tools.
The drilling technique, which uses sand, water and chemicals under high pressure to extract oil and natural gas from rock formations, has helped Eagle Ford oil production grow by 184% last year compared with 2011, according to the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the state's oil and gas exploration and production.
He said it should have made plain to BP employees that the pressure under the well was unstable, making the well "dangerous and fragile", and that drilling should have stopped immediately.
Fracking is a drilling process that frees gas from deep rock deposits by injecting wells with chemical-laced water at high pressure.
New offshore drilling in most U.S. waters has been banned since the early 1980s, when mounting public pressure pushed lawmakers into action.
We remain confident in our drilling expertise and company standards, which are built upon a foundation of redundant safety systems to closely monitor pressure within the wellbore.
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