Petroleum industry investors are often keen to know the updates on offshore oil news. Here is a basic idea for an average person, who wants to know about the offshore oil platforms.
An offshore oil platform, called as offshore platform or oil rig is a large structure mainly used to drill oil wells in the beds, for the process of extracting oil and natural gas. These fuels extracted are shipped or piped to various countries. It is estimated that US had produced about 9 million barrels of crude oil/day in 2005, and was able to import 13.21 million barrels/day to various countries. Oil is refined to make gasoline, heating oil, kerosene and various other products. But to keep–up with the consumption of oil, that goes higher and higher each day, the companies must look for new resources to improve the production of oil, from the existing wells.
Oil, one among the fossil fuels, is found in many countries around the world. Production of offshore oil and gas is much riskier and challenging as it is often done in far-flung and harsh environments. The innovations that are going in offshore oil sectors these days focus more on overcoming these challenges. The production and drilling facilities are very large and expenses for offshore oil platforms are very high.
Offshore oil production also has environmental risks, especially oil spills from oil tankers and pipelines that carry oil from the offshore platform to onshore, and leaks and accidents on the offshore platform.
Produced water (water that is produced with oil and gas, from offshore oil platform) is also generated from offshore platforms. It includes different amounts of oil, drilling fluid and which are usually used in oil production. The produced water is usually emptied into the ocean.
More information about offshore oil platforms and offshore oil drilling can be received from the blogs which are published by the leading oil and gas research and investing companies.
