OUTLOOK 2003: United States
Drilling & Producing Depth Records

Five US depth records added

 Five depth records were set during the 2001 – 2002 period, although one well was an OCS Gulf record that was eclipsed in 2002. Chevron drilled a well, designated OCS-G 13145 Well-1, in Block 727 of Mississippi Canyon to 25,855-ft TVD. The following year, in 2002, Chevron broke that record by drilling a Green Canyon Block 640 well to 30,217-ft TVD. Meanwhile, in Garden Banks Block 602, Shell bested its own producing record of 22,936 ft set in 2000 with Well A2. In 2002, in the same block, the company drilled OCS-G 11553 Well-A4 to a TVD-producing-zone record of 23,257 ft.

U.S. producing true vertical depth records

 New to this year’s drilling table are two wells from Alaska; although drilled in 1998, they were reported as records in 2001. BP's Milne Pt. Unit KR-L36 and its Prudhoe Bay UN-NIA NK-11 both set measured depth records of 21,980 ft and 23,855 ft, respectively. BP also drilled an Alaskan OCS producing depth record, with its 13,193-ft Northstar well. Finally, in New York, Columbia Natural Resources started producing from 10,015 ft.

 The table, Chronological records of the deepest producing zones, will not be listed this year. However, any past issue (1980 – 2001) will contain this table. It has not changed since 1980.  

U.S. drilling true vertical depth records