Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Sparkman, G. Search for Related Content

An introduction—Deepwater technology commitment

The Woodlands, Texas

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

A banner headline over a column in the December 2002 issue of Offshore Engineer caught my eye. Its analysis of a New Orleans conference on deep offshore technology included the telling phrase "missing from most deepwater technology solutions was operator commitment." The author, Offshore Engineer's U.S. editor Rick von Flatern, used dual gradient drilling (DGD) as a specific example. He wrote that "[DGD], on which the industry had spent more than $100 million by early 2002 in three separate JIP's, had yet to gain a single commercial job." He went on to say "operators were put off by factors such as reluctance to be the first, a lack of data in the public domain, insufficent skill sets among contractors and operators, and the gap between costs of the systems and their value." I guess the geophysical industry can take solace in learning that we are not the only sector of the industry facing this dilemma of funding and applying innnovative technology.

A parallel to the drillers' DGD technology could be our industry's four-component ocean-bottom cable (OBC) recording systems. This technology has received considerable attention in the last 7–8 years, including a special section in TLE (1999), but we are still waiting for it to gain wide acceptance.

Let's further analyze a couple of the factors, cited above, that . . . [Full Text of this Article]