Aboard the Discoverer Deep Seas, nearly three football fields long, the ship appears to be sitting idle on the turquoise blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Beneath the deck, there's no such tranquility. A 200-person crew of geologists, engineers and technicians work around the clock at dimly lit keyboards, controlling every move of an adjoining oil rig as it uses a 16-inch pipe to bore through the ocean floor. The Chevron Corp. crew is developing a deepwater oil field 190 miles off the Louisiana coast projected to produce 100,000 barrels a day by 2008 and 500 million barrels overall....
