The hole under way is the excavation hole, where the drill bit will be placed.
It has good cash flow generation and upside potential from the drill bit.
"One of the things BP hasn't gotten credit for is how successful they've been with the drill bit, " he says.
It seems that the targeted sands which have resulted in very rich discoveries offshore in several very big wells drilled by others are just below the drill bit.
But for shale gas, once the drill reaches the shale rock underground, the drill bit is turned horizontally to bore a well that stretches through the natural gas producing shale.
Over the last two years McMoRan and Energy XXI, its exploration partner, have seen their shares surge and collapse with both oil and gas prices and also their success with the drill bit.
Drilling under Plan A will stop this weekend once the drill bit reaches 1, 247 feet (380 meters), then the drill will receive scheduled maintenance before resuming early next week, engineer Rene Aguilar said.
Those deep water rigs use an enormous amount of diesel fuel to turn the drill bit, and also resist the force that is turning the drill bit and would otherwise force the platform to start turning in the opposite direction.
Yet a survey of both the drill-bit manufacturers, which were Synthetic's immediate customers, and the drilling companies hinted that those projections were light.
Inside the riser pipe is a space about half a meter in diameter, large enough to hold the spinning drill pipe and bit and to allow the return flow of drilling fluid.
Of the mass man, the automated turbine and drill bit and bore, yes?
Who wants to go out in the snow to get the exact screwdriver or drill bit, when you can usually find a semi-passable workaround?
With each new well, new tools are being developed to deal with the intense pressures and temperatures involved with controlling a drill bit that is 6 miles into the earth.
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Then a few more hundred feet is drilled with a narrower drill bit and then the narrower casing is run and cemented in.
Curiosity will likely drill a number of shallow test holes, using the tailings to scrub the metal bit of any contaminants carried from Earth.
Super lifehacker Tim Ferriss is a bit of a masochist, the kind of guy who will ask doctors to drill a chunk of muscle out of his leg to analyze the fibers.
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