FT piece.
BP, naturally, keeps selling the Deepwater Horizon disaster as indicative of industry-wide problems, while the rest of Big Oil says otherwise—also to no surprise.
Other firms want deep-water drilling to continue, stating that their practices are better.
What I found interesting about the chart showing where everybody is drilling in the Gulf: Deepwater’s water depth is listed as 5200 feet, but of the 18 other rigs listed, 8 are equally deep or a lot deeper (in the 7-8,000 ft range). Companies drilling at that deeper depth include Shell, Chevron, Anadarko and Noble.
Of the 33 rigs left idle by Obama’s ban, we’re talking costs of about $12m a day.
The industry plans to invest about $170B in deep-water drilling tech and gear between now and 2014, or something on the order of $30-35B a year.
Naturally, BP’s massive screw-up (less the original accident, I would wager, than the incredibly incompetent response since) will perturb the entire industry, because America’s new rules on the subject will have global impact.