The First Deep Ocean Drilling

Abstract

Only twenty years ago, in 1960, the deepest water in which drilling had ever been done was about 360 feet; by April 1961 that record had been extended to 12,000 feet. This is the story of how that giant step downward from the continental shelf to the deep ocean basin came about in spite of the widely held view among drilling experts that drilling in such a depth of water was impossible. The oil drilling business was used to seeing record depths extended by 20% or so but it was astonished by an increase of over 3000 percent; for years the implications of the new capability echoed through the offshore industry.