Twenty Years in the Making?
While the country was focused on the cleanup in Alaska, Shell Oil came in later that same year and announced it had found a lot of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, this was believed to be the answer to America’s prayers. Politicians were eager to boost offshore drilling in this area. It was less of a risk than the fragile waters and environments in Alaska, and offshore drilling was also being fought in California, but no one was protesting the Gulf. The push from industry and enthusiasm from lawmakers created swift movement and left no time for regulators to catch up with the technology being used. Concerns for safety seemed practically nonexistent because this was such new state-of-the-art technology. In April of 1994, Shell opened the deepest well yet in the Gulf of Mexico.
Drilled at 2,860 feet below the surface, Auger Field was about 140 miles off the shore of Louisiana and the beginning of deepwater drilling in the region. This was brand-new technology; a floating platform above the surface of the Gulf, requiring the development of remote vehicles to do the work. Over nine hundred companies were involved in it’s construction. All together, the well was an over one billion dollar project. This came at a time when the US was only producing 6.6 million barrels a day, and production in the region had dropped 20% in the past five years. Auger Field was seemingly the answer. When Auger Field first started oil was at $16 a barrel*. This required the first two wells to produce 8,000 barrels a day, each. The most either could produce was 2,000. Within a few months engineers found that calcium carbonates were clogging the reservior, this was solved by blasting them with hydrochloric acid. Soon the wells were at 10,000 a day and by the late 1990’s, Auger Field was the biggest producer in the Gulf, at over 100,000 barrels a day.*
