Word: drilled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most Generous. Domestic-oil exploration has changed drastically since the 1956 Suez crisis touched off an any-thing-goes search for more Stateside oil. Renewed imports, tightened state restrictions to guard reserves, and marginal returns from shallow drilling are forcing today's oilmen to drill deeper and to move into states where allowables-the monthly production quotas imposed by the state-are more generous. Louisiana is not only among the most liberal in quotas, but has the best deep-drill prospects. Though Texas still leads all oil-producing states (35.5% of U.S. production), its oil output has declined steadily...
...companies that have flocked offshore have to drill down through as much as 300 ft. of water and 16,000 ft. of mud and shale. A single successful well costs as much as $3,000,000, about six times the cost of a similar dry-land operation. The lease on a giant three-legged drilling platform, such as Kerr-McGee's Kermac 54, now jack-legged this week into 180 ft. of water 80 miles from shore, runs to $8,000 a day. Oil companies so far have invested $4.25 billion in offshore operations, recovered $1.75 billion...
...taken over by a few big cattle operators who strip the fields, turn it back into pasture, graze huge herds. This is where such oil millionaires as H. L. Hunt, Sid Richardson and the Murchisons hit big money in the 1930s. And it is where the "whipstock," a curving drill stem that steals oil from other wells, was long king...
While Physicist William Mansfield Adams was working at the atomic Energy Commission's Livermore laboratory in California, he heard a lot about Project Mohole, and he did not believe what he heard. Mohole's goal is to drill through the earth's crust to see what the earth below is made of, and Adams questioned whether conventional drilling methods could reach much deeper than five miles, one-quarter of the desired distance. The doubting physicist worked out a radically different scheme for doing...
...smoke soon convinced them that something was amiss. Other passengers who had gone to bed early were not yet fully aware of the danger. No fire instructions were issued over the loudspeaker, and the alarm bells stopped ringing so quickly that many people thought it was only a drill...