breakaway from the surface to concentrate on totally submerged operations 

 in an environment unaffected by weather. The industry expects that this 

 technology will cause the curves that show costs rapidly rising with depth 

 to be discarded and replaced by ones that increase only moderately with 

 depth. The near term goal is to have wells economical in 1000 feet of 

 water. Such systems will be beyond the reach of storms, high seas, and 

 ship traffic — hazards to which fixed production platforms that extend above 

 sea level are now exposed. Subsea systems, of course, have potential haz- 

 ards of their own, but there seems to be no fundamental reason why they 

 could not be handled. 



Of the more than 17,000 wells drilled in our offshore only a handful 

 caused problems, and there seems to be little hard evidence of long-term 

 environmental damage from those that did (although this question is not 

 entirely closed), and the short-term effects can be and have been severe. 

 From experience in oil production in the Gulf, less contamination of the 

 ocean apparently results from offshore drilling, production, and pipelining 

 to shore than by shipping in a like amount of oil by tankers. 



NACOA feels that one of the top priority Government functions should 

 be to establish environmental norms in the offshore and along the strand 

 and to provide environmental forecasts of sea-states, currents, biological 

 background, and chemical pollution. Such norms are essential to setting 

 pollution control and siting regulations. Once the nonns are established 

 periodic monitoring should be maintained to recognize changes and to help 

 determine whether these are due to natural causes or to industrial activ- 

 ities and in the latter instance what control measures are indicated. Fore- 

 casts would enhance safety and help protect the environment. Government 

 geophysical surveys should provide a general overview of the sub-bottom 

 structures. Where necessary, special emphasis should be placed upon data 

 needed to ensure safe procedures for exploration and recovery operations. 



Financing offshore exploration, drilling, and production can and should 

 be done by the petroleum industry. However, since such operations will 

 be done in areas largely under Federal jurisdiction, it will be necessary 

 for Government to establish regulations that will provide protection for 

 the ocean environment, and compatibility of petroleum operations with 

 other activities within the coastal zone, while allowing proper incentives 

 for the petroleum industry to enable it to generate the very large capital 

 funds required to develop these offshore petroleum resources. Also, regula- 

 tion should not be such as to jeopardize other international positions on 

 offshore questions. 



Deep-Water Terminals vs. Deep-Water Ports 



While we fully expect efforts to encourage discovery rate, improve re- 

 covery efficiency, and control demand to be successful, it will be essential 



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