Drilling for Offshore Oil
Overview
Although the first "offshore" oil drilling took place in the mid-1890s, the first true offshore oil rig, out of sight of land, was not built until 1947 off the Louisiana coast. Since that time, offshore and deep-water drilling has become increasingly sophisticated, and oil recovery is taking place in ever-deeper waters on the continental shelf throughout the world. In addition to the Gulf of Mexico, offshore oil rigs have sprouted off the California coast, between Indonesia and Australia, the Caspian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and in the North Sea. Near-shore drilling takes place in Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo and, north of Indonesia, in waters claimed by China, Vietnam, and Indonesia lies what may be the world's largest natural gas field. The world has come to depend heavily on offshore oil, in spite of the risk of large-scale marine oil spills, the expense of constructing an oil platform, and the risky nature of the work.
Background
Seeps of oil have been known since antiquity, including some places just off the coast of California. In the mid-1890s, a few oil wells were drilled off a pier near Santa Barbara, but they produced only a few barrels of oil per day.
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