Business
The Bahamas looking to start drilling for oil in 2013
The company hired by the Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC) to plan and execute an exploratory well in Bahamian waters says it believes it will be drilling by the end of next year.
Applied Drilling Technology International (ADTI), based in Texas, is a division of Transocean, one of the largest offshore drilling contractors in the world with thousands of employees and billions in annual revenue.
While ADTI refers to itself as a turnkey operator, providing an all-inclusive approach to drilling, top executives revealed to reporters that, in this case, they will only provide project management services for the Bahamas Petroleum Company.
“We are doing the pre-planning and design of the well. We design it with our people here, on our staff. Once the design is done, we move into the logistics planning stage,” said Jess Richards, managing director at ADTI. “Once that is done, we will have a small team of engineers that will manage the day-to-day operations on the ground in The Bahamas. There will be supervisors on the rig. Between our base teams and offshore teams, you’re looking at around 12 people.”
While not wishing to comment on the geological makeup in The Bahamas, Richards said, “We believe there is an incentive to drill a well. We believe we will be drilling by the end of next year. We’re working as directed by BPC. All indications that we have received show we’re on track.”
According to BPC’s drilling licences, the company is required to spud an exploratory well by April of 2013. The ADTI director said his company, compared to other areas of the world, has not done a lot of exploration in the Caribbean. ADTI does manage wells all over the world, he added, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, which holds many similarities to waters of the Bahamas.
“It’ll be a challenging well, but that’s our forte,” Richards told reporters.
