By John Donovan
In 2002, Royal Dutch Shell had a close call in the Gulf of Mexico when the oil giant was “forced to abandon drilling an $80 million well at a prospect called Deep Mensa in the Mississippi Canyon after the drill bit got stuck at nearly 28,000 feet attempting to drill through fractured rock.”
The event was described in a recent book by Tom Bower – “The Squeeze” – as a disaster.
He wrote: “Technicians monitoring the data witnessed the ‘crash out’ – the uncontrolled vibrations which smashed the drill as it struggled through fractured rock.”
It took Shell a year to correct mistakes that had been made.
Sources
The History of Offshore Oil and Gas in the United States (Long Version) Staff Working Paper No. 22
THE SQUEEZE – Oil, Money & Greed in the 21st Century by Tom Bower
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
