Development Strategy 



The sponsor's strategies of production drilling include minimizing 

 construction and installation time and costs, engineering an optimal 

 design, and siting the platform in the best known location on the company's 

 lease holdings. 



Platform construction costs are usually minimized by having it 

 constructed at the yard nearest to the field. Yards attempt to locate 

 to maximize attraction of business, as for example, the proposed yard in 

 Astoria, Oregon, which will sell platforms in both Alaska and California. 

 Fabrication of platforms is discussed in Section 2.3.4. 



Engineering an optimal design has great flexibility. The platform 

 is designed for a specific site. The design includes locating the deck 

 above the 100 year wave height, determining the technological features 

 of the structure, ascertaining the number of wells to be drilled from 

 the platform, etc. As the petroleum industry moves into deeper waters 

 the costs associated with each platform rise dramatically. In these 

 deeper areas, it becomes increasingly critical for the petroleum company 

 to use fewer platforms to accomplish the same drilling and production 

 tasks. This strategy is implemented through directional drilling and 

 attaching as large a number of wells to a single platform as is possible. 



Platform siting was discussed earlier in this section. Locating 

 the best site on a tract involves tradeoffs between the reservoir location 

 and surface conditions on the ocean floor. 



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