Offshore Drilling Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Offshore Drilling What is it? Drilling for oil in the ocean is one of the greatest technological breakthroughs in recent decades, and many new techniques have been developed to profit from the abundance of oil underneath the ocean floor. While drilling for oil has been around for hundreds of years in one form or the another, the effective extraction of petroleum from beneath the sea floor did not surface until the last forty years. The search for oil often turns out to be unproductive, but this practice is vital for the economic future of many nations. In order for any drilling to take place, an offshore drilling rig must first be installed. These offshore platforms can be situated in water up to a several hundred meters in depth. But before any drilling takes place, an oil and gas "trap" must first be located in the ocean, and with the ocean floor being at such great depths, the visibility is often very poor. To locate potential traps, engineers use seismic surveying, and then analyze the data they receive to decide whether or not drilling in the area would have the chance of containing oil and/or gas. The engineers will not know whether their assumptions are true until they penetrate the trap with a drill bit. Due to the fact that the traps can sometimes be a great distance below the ocean, advanced computer technology is required to guide the drill bit to a fixed location. Installed above the drill bit is a navigation device, which sends back information to the controller, allowing them to locate the exact location that is presu med to have the oil and to measure and monitor the trap. Inside the drill pipe, there is a steerable motor that can be controlled to adjust the drill and the direction in which it is headed. ... ...ould be less tension between the federal government, the oil companies, environmentalists, and the public. More importantly, we would be following the process theology and respecting nature, which is what God wants us to do. References Offshore Drilling Page. 1999. Gulf Coast Environmental Defense. <http://www.southerncitizen.org/gced/articles/no_rigs/10_15_97dp.html> <http://www.southerncitizen.org/gced/articles/no_rigs/battle.html> Offshore Drilling. Odyssey Magazine n ° 1. <http://www.elf.fr/odyssee/us/mag/mag01/fmer.htm> Offshore Drilling. Australian Institute of Petroleum. <http://www.aip.com.au/education/projects/pt_offshore/> Bright, Thomas J., Thompson, Jack H. Research Product. 21 Jan. 1980. 24 Jan. 1980 <http://www.epa.gov/ged/publica/c1410.htm> Barbour, Ian. Ethics in an Age of Technology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.