Posted on 04/25/2006 7:49:23 PM PDT by CAWats
The rules in the gas and oil game are changing. World supplies are tight. Wells in many regions are producing less fuel.
Competition for reserves, equipment and engineering talent have forced prices through the roof. As a result, oil producers are casting nets far and wide in search of new sources of energy supplies.
Drillers that support the producers are following close behind. One of the leading trends is a move toward deep offshore drilling. Pride International (PDE) is following that trend.
The company's 289 rigs are spread over land and sea in 30 countries. Its service operations are similarly scattered worldwide.
Like other drillers, Pride has shoveled up profits from the recent energy boom. Earnings hit 74 cents a share last year, up from 23 cents in 2004. Revenue moved up 19% to $2.03 billion.
Pride is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings on Thursday. Analysts polled by First Call see quarterly profit nearly tripling to 29 cents a share. They expect full-year profit to reach $2.09 a share, then climb 83% to $3.83 in 2007.
To maintain growth, Pride plans to sell off its land-based assets and its older, smaller and less lucrative offshore rigs. This will let it concentrate on the high end of the market: deep-water rigs.
"They are trying to essentially focus the company on the premium part of the offshore sector," said analyst Poe Fratt of AG Edwards.
The deep-water plan is simple: follow the big money. Top tier producers such as Exxon Mobil, (XOM) Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) and Chevron (CVX) are paying increasing attention to deep-water projects.
Deep-water drilling offers the promise of finding large-scale, conventional reserves — oil and gas likely to flow in large quantities with minimal fracturing. Deep-water reserves also tend to be furthest from political and civil upheaval.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Here is a link to their deep drilling rigs:
http://www.prideinternational.com/rigfleet/semi.htm
Pretty amazing stuff. We need many more of these.
Thanks.
In some of the older fields that have been abandoned for some time, just re-working the collection and distribution system to bring it up to current environmental standards would be prohibitively expensive.
Besides oil, there is probably 3 times more gold, silver and diamonds under the seas than there is on earth. Companies will eventually be mining those in the deep sea, too.
Believable with oil at under $40 a barrel, but with oil trading at $75 per barrel, I just don't belive it's prohibitive to use that oil now.
Sorry....all I have is ancedotal BS - stuff garnered from several years here on FR as well as other message boards - and the occaisional report from people who "know people" in the business, and a few family members who have either been indirectly involved with the industry, or have dircect connections to those who are.
What I do have direct knowledge of: there are quite a few wells in NW Arkansas that are capped - were capped immediately when found/drilled. Some have been re-opened in the past few years, many go unused.
Whatever!
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