Exxon Mobil Corp. has set another record, and this time it has nothing to do with its annual profits.
The Irving-based oil giant said it has drilled the world’s longest extended-reach well from a drilling rig on a fixed offshore platform — in, of all places, California.
The well extends more than six miles horizontally and more than 7,000 feet below sea level, the company said.
It’s part of a development known as the the Santa Ynex Unit, in federal waters near Santa Barbara, that includes three production platforms called Hondo, Harmony and Heritage and that Exxon Mobil says has yielded more than 450 million barrels of oil since 1981.
The Heritage platform drilled the record well — which also holds the title as the longest extended reach well in North America — the company said.
In recent years, the company’s work in tapping wells deep below and miles out from Russia’s icy Sakhlin Island have led to better tools it says have put into play wells once considered out of reach. Now, it is employing the technology here.
“Exxon Mobil is applying its advanced drilling technologies to produce more domestic supplies of oil to meet America’s growing energy needs,” Kok-Yew See, Exxon Mobil’s U.S. production manager, said in a prepared statement.
The record-setting California well will be able to produce an additional 5.8 million barrels of oil equivalent, an amount equal to the annual energy consumption of over 144,000 Californians, the company said.
[mappress]
Source: Exxon,April 16, 2010;