About 80 miles southeast of Louisiana’s coast, 100,000 metric tons of steel floats in the Gulf of Mexico, an emblem of the hopes of oil and gas companies.
This hulk of metal, a deepwater platform called Appomattox and owned by Shell, collects the oil and gas that rigs tap from reservoirs thousands of feet below the seafloor.
But oil companies like Shell are betting that the world will need oil and gas for decades to come.
To serve that demand, they are expanding offshore oil and gas drilling into deeper and deeper waters, especially here in the Gulf of Mexico.
Offshore production, oil executives argue, is not only crucial to power cars, trucks and power plants but also better for the planet than drilling on land.
Organizations:
Shell
Locations:
Louisiana’s, Gulf of Mexico, Appomattox