Approximately 70 percent of the earth’s surface is water, and many oil and natural gas reserves are beneath the world’s oceans and seas. Exploring in the deepwater environment is punishing, and the challenges are enormous, including near freezing temperatures, crushing pressure and powerful waves. To face these challenges, America’s oil and natural gas companies have developed many new offshore platform technologies to unlock oil and natural gas deposits that were previously inaccessible.

• High technology floating drill ships are the deepest operating platforms. They can drill in 10,000 feet of water — almost two miles down. America’s oil and natural gas companies can reach resources in water three times as deep as what was accessible 10 years ago.
• Dynamic positioning technology creates a high tech link between the ship’s thrusters and global positioning satellites to keep the drill ship accurately positioned over the well without anchors. In the deepest waters, the drilling equipment that penetrates the seafloor is installed and maintained by robotically controlled, remotely operated vehicles.

The Gulf of Mexico accident and oil spill are tragic. The industry remains committed to determining what happened so precautions can be taken to avoid another tragic accident and energy can be produced safely and reliably. Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico plays an important role in meeting growing demand for oil and natural gas, and deepwater production will play an increasingly important role in the future.

About 30 percent of the nation’s total domestic oil production and 13 percent of domestic natural gas production comes from the Gulf of Mexico, where a majority of the nation’s offshore development takes place. Deepwater development represents the “new frontier” in offshore oil and natural gas development. Approximately 70 percent of the oil and 36 percent of the natural gas in the Gulf come from deepwater exploration.

Exploration for and production of oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico support hundreds of thousands of jobs and are a key factor in U.S. technological leadership in the global energy economy.

According to the latest published estimates, the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) holds approximately 86 billion barrels of oil and more than 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s enough oil and natural gas to heat 133 million homes for 50 years. The OCS resources off the lower 48 states alone are enough to provide gasoline for 134 million cars and heating oil for 6.3 million homes for 15 years, plus enough natural gas to maintain current OCS production levels for over 115 years.

The total recoverable resources, using today's technology, are equivalent to the oil resources of Canada and Mexico combined and nearly three times their natural gas resources.

Our companies are working to improve the technologies that enable us to access the energy we need offshore in a safe and reliable way.

The industry formed two task forces to address issues related to offshore equipment and offshore operating practices, and is coordinating with the independent presidential commission investigating the spill.