President Trump has promised to dramatically increase oil and gas production to lower energy prices and shore up national security. His first day in office he declared an energy emergency and moved to expand offshore drilling. Today, Scott Thuman take us on a fascinating trip, way out into deep waters, where he found the industry already gearing up for big changes.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Just outside of New Orleans we board the helicopter. Our destination: 140 miles out, into what’s now called the Gulf of America, to one of the oil and natural gas industry’s most advanced platforms.

We fly south, well past the trail of rigs dotting the horizon.

Scott: Heading way out into the Gulf, really helps tell the story of where this industry is going. We’ve flown over a lot of rigs and platforms, relics of earlier years when a lot of rigs were found closer to shore. These days, some of the best wells are much further out and much deeper down than you realize.

Approaching Chevron’s newest platform called Anchor, we see the deep sea drilling ship Titan that’s made this groundbreaking energy field possible.

This floating outpost of steel and high technology started producing just recently after years of planning and construction, a symbol of what the industry hopes, is the future, backed by a president and a catchy chant.

President Trump: We will drill baby drill.

And on Anchor they drilled the wells deep. These pipes go down 5000 feet to the sea floor, and then down thousands more to reach an reservoir that’s as deep as 34,000 feet. That’s six and a half miles below the seafloor.

Russell Benoit Is Anchor’s operations supervisor.

Russell Benoit: It’s very complex. It takes a lot of engineering, a lot of thought, a lot of boats, a lot of vessels. A lot of things happened before this facility ever came offshore to make this allowable.

Scott: Takes years of planning?

Benoit: Years, yes, yes, many years. So, I think in my history here that almost 15, 20 years of planning behind this project and execution.

Once complete, seven wells will be linked by pipe back to the Anchor platform, where it’s all processed, before another set of lines, pump the product all the way back to shore. adding up to a $5.7 billion investment for America’s no 2 energy company.

Bruce Niemeyer is Chevron’s president of exploration and production for the Americas.

Scott: How important is the Gulf to you?

Bruce Niemeyer: We’ve been in the Gulf of America for 85 years. We’re continuing to invest today. We are increasing production 50% between last year and what we will see next year.

Scott: That’s a huge number.

Niemeyer: It is a big number. It reflects the potential and the opportunity that is there. It is there for our company and by extension, therefore the industry and for the nation.

That potential and opportunity, something President Trump plans to tap. He says he wants the US to be energy dominant. In the first few days in office he declared an energy emergency to allow his administration to take fast action to increase production, open more areas for drilling, and ramp up liquid natural gas exports.

Scott: From a President Biden to a President Trump, do you see a big difference coming?

Niemeyer: Well, I would just point to actions. Under President Biden in his first month in office, he issued an executive order that paused leasing of oil and gas on federal lands. In his last month, he withdrew 625 million acres of federal land from consideration in oil and gas leasing. And those things are challenging for an industry that is attempting to provide affordable and reliable energy.

In the case of this project, using new technology, rated to deal with up to 20,000 pounds of pressure to tap reserves that were previously unavailable.

Benoit: The 20K that’s putting us in a realm of thought on formations that we thought weren’t producible at one point in time are now achievable. So, that definitely changes how we look at things and prospects that we may go after.

In Anchor’s nerve center, a small team monitor’s the operation. Neil Menzies is in charge of large projects for Chevron.

Neil Menzies: What the team here is doing, they’re controlling the wells, which are 34,000 feet deep, five miles away remotely from here. They’re operating the plant that is on this facility and then also controlling the export that heads back to the gulf.

Scott: What still kind of blows your mind about all of this?

Menzies: I think we’re really just really proud to be safely leading the industry into that next frontier of development and unlocking the resource potential of the Gulf for ourselves and for industry.

These new production platforms are not just able to reach deeper and produce at higher pressures; they’re also safer these days. The crews frequently practice emergency scenarios; the equipment designed to cope with potential disaster like that which destroyed BP’s Deepwater Horizon back in 2010. The blast and following fire killed 11 workers. For 87 days, oil gushed from the well, over 134 million gallons, causing widespread damage to the Gulf ecology, and a lasting impact to the support for offshore drilling.

Today there are thousands of wells in the Gulf of America, accounting for 14% of our oil and 5% of our natural gas production.

Texas is the biggest producing state but there are nearly a million wells across the nation from California to New York, all helping to make the US the biggest oil producer for the last seven years.

Scott: I noticed earlier you said the Gulf of America, is that a nod to President Trump?

Niemeyer: Well, so we follow the naming convention of whatever regulatory organization defines that. Our leaseholds in the Gulf are all federal leaseholds.

Trump wants to increase the number of offshore federal leases, repealing Biden’s restrictions on the Arctic and Pacific.

Ultimately, it’ll be independent energy companies, not the government to determine if the billions in investments out here to bring down prices back on land is a worthy tradeoff. The president, betting they will.

Scott: Forty miles out, 34,000 feet deep, those are crazy numbers to a lot of people.

Benoit: It’s crazy numbers to me sometimes too. So it is very exciting and challenging and overwhelming and it’s not something you do on your own. There’s a lot of smart people that help this process get to where it’s at.

Sharyl: Princes went down in the first Trump term, do you think increasing production now is going to do that again?

Scott: Well it’ll certainly help but there is a balance between the price of oil and willingness of oil companies to produce more. The lower the prices, the less incentive there is for them to drill new wells.

Sharyl: But the industry is happy, right?

Scott: For the most part, yes, very optimistic, especially about what the call the leveling of the playing field. They’re talking about those taxpayer-funded incentives that in the past have been directed more at the solar and wind side of the industry. They think that’s changing.

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