1 In answering your question, I don't know of any specific interest 



2 in trying to drill in a canyon. 



3 MR. VILD: Would the oil companies entertain a proposal to do 



4 directional drilling outside of the canyons and go underneath the 



5 canyons for the oil? 



6 DR. RAY: That question usually depends on a couple things. One, 



7 in exploratory drilling, generally because of the nature of the drilling 



8 and the interpretation they're trying to do, they try to drill straight 



9 holes. 



10 In the development phases, that is usually not too big of a 



11 problem. They can kick out anywhere from a mile to 2 or 3 miles 



12 laterally as long as the well depth is deep enough, because they build 



13 up to an 80 or 90 degree angle going out fairly quickly nowadays with 



14 the technology we've got. 



15 They could be several miles away and develop from beneath an area 



16 like that. It's just in the exploratory phase where they run into the 



17 problem with drilling high deviation holes. 



18 DR. COOPER: I hate to see one guy take on an entire audience. 



19 Some of you may be surprised at my stance here because I've spent some 



20 very enjoyable years of my professional life in these canyon 



21 environments and other parts of the shelf, but I am quite convinced that 



22 the negative impacts of any kind of production drilling, given an 



23 occasional massive spill out there in the canyons, is greatly 



24 overshadowed by man's total ineptness at managing it's own living 



25 resources. 



26 It's fisherman and the habitats that protect these resources. 



27 We're really not talking about issues of cold, hard logic, and balancing 



28 the ledger of one versus the other, we're talking about emotional 



29 perceptions here. 



30 That's really what—I'm tempted to ask and I will ask the 



31 question, 10 years and 3 1/2 months from now when OPEC finally gets its 



32 act together and the price of oil and gas skyrockets and our commercial 



33 fishery, at the very least, if not a recreational, is 1/3 of the level 



143 



