Discoveries and incentives fail to bolster sluggish rig count

Despite the undoubted success of drilling in the US Gulf of Mexico's deep waters, the number of rigs operating in the region and the number of wells drilled are falling. As a result, the region's drilling companies, facing falling rig-utilisation rates, are looking elsewhere for opportunities. Anne Feltus reports

ON THE surface, upstream activity in the US Gulf of Mexico (GoM) looks healthy. The scene of intense activity since the mid-1990s, the deep-water GoM has yielded at least 100 discoveries—including eight announced this year—from about 750 exploratory wells drilled. At the end of last year, 86 projects had begun production—a fivefold increase over the number on stream in 1997—and several more projects, including ExxonMobil's Llano field and Dominion's Devils Tower, have come on stream since 1 January. Yet there is plenty of oil still to be found—about 56bn barrels of oil equivalent, the US Minerals Management Service (MMS) claims. Exploration and production in the deep-water GoM 'have succeede