I work on an offshore oil installation, or an oil rig. Oil rigs drill holes to a depth of 5 km on average. However holes have been drilled to 17 km. The purpose of these holes is to find or produce oil or gas. A hole that is drilled to find new areas of oil or gas is call an exploration well. On average only every 1 out of every 10 exploration wells finds oil or gas. When oil or gas is found, more holes are drilled to find out the size the oil or gas field. These hole are called development wells. If the field is big enough, and the oil company thinks they can make a profit, the fiield is economic. Production wells will be drilled to bring the oil or gas to market. Each of these wells can cost 1 million dollars or more to drill. Deeper wells can cost a lot more.
When an oil company decides to drill a well, they hire or contract a rig to do the drilling. A drill rig usually comes complete with a drill crew, a roustabout or maintence crew and a marine crew. The oil company must then hire a number of different specialist companies to carry out different jobs on the rig. I work for a mudlogging company that collects and handles most of the data when drilling a well.
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