The Peak Oil Crisis: Hyping Jack No. 2
The story broke the morning after Labor Day, when the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page piece reporting that Chevron along with two partners had announced the results of a major oil production test in the Gulf of Mexico. The partners Chevron, Statoil, and Devon Energy ran the test on a well known as Jack No. 2 that was drilled last year in the Lower Tertiary zone of the Gulf of Mexico. This zone is about 80 miles wide, 300 miles long and is located about 175 miles off shore. The well was unusual in that it went to a depth of 28,000 feet and the drilling began under 7,000 feet of water.

There's a hole in the bottom of the sea
"In a recent article entitled Chevron Conquers the Rock," published Sept. 12, 2006, I discussed the recent announcement by Chevron Corp. that it successfully completed a record-setting production test on the Jack #2 well at Walker Ridge Block 758 in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. I discussed the context of the Chevron announcement to include the timing of the announcement, the costs of drilling the well, the remoteness of the site, the depth of the well, and the oil itself and the difficulty of getting to it and lifting it from the Earth. I could not pass up the opportunity to discuss Peak Oil. And I even discussed good old Col. Edwin Drake."