drilling-investments.com

You see, from the late 19th to mid-20th century, finding oil was more luck than skill. Easy
discoveries launched the golden age of oil discovery in Pennsylvania and Alberta, Canada.
Those early discoveries often had clues, like oil seeping into local rivers.
As demand increased, some savvy geologist in Texas realized that rocks warped into
inverted bowls (called anticlines) might hold oil. The discovery at Spindletop sent drill rigs
onto every anticline and eventually any other structure that could hold oil.
Things are a lot different now

We shoot sound waves thousands of feet through water and rock, then process the wiggles
into useful data. We use geochemical "sniffers" to detect the merest whiff of oil or gas.
Sometimes we take a theory, back it by millions of dollars, and get lucky.
That was the case with deepwater oil in the Gulf of Mexico. What we learned there spread
throughout the world. Now deepwater is the best place to find a giant oil field.

Service companies that operate in deep water can practically name their price. Rig rates for
the big, deepwater-capable anchor handling, towing, and supply vessels increased by 70%
since the first quarter of 2006. And the latest data shows that those rates jumped 10% from
the first quarter to the second quarter of this year.