The consortium has already made discoveries at the Blackbeard prospect and at Davy Jones.
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Blackbeard, who narrates the new AC4 trailer, has been the subject of many movies and documentaries.
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In 1718, Edward Teach, known as "Blackbeard" the pirate, was killed off the coast of North Carolina.
McMoran went back into Blackbeard with heavier equipment and discovered natural gas reservoirs hundreds of feet thick.
Next up in that area was the drilling of another prospect 9 miles away at Blackbeard East .
Moffett has also invested heavily to make several other ultradeep discoveries including Blackbeard.
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Early visitors are said to have included Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, various German planters and privateers, and Blackbeard.
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At this point, Blackbeard East is being readied for a bypass and completion of the well to its targeted depth.
Located in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, these wells like Davy Jones and Blackbeard have found massive amounts of natural gas.
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The company expects to have results of key flow tests from Davy Jones this month and from its Blackbeard and Lafitte wells early next year.
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Energy XXI is not involved with all of them but does have interests in Blackbeard East and West, Davy Jones and Lafitte which I discuss later.
In the 17th century the cays' hidden inlets, coves and limestone caverns were the favorite haunts of such pirates and privateers as Blackbeard, who plundered Spanish galleons leaving the New World.
McMoran took over Blackbeard West some years ago and found hydrocarbons about 2500 feet below the point where Exxon Mobil gave up and poured cement down the hole to seal it.
That particular well was drilled to hold the Blackbeard acreage for the partnership, even though it was the least interesting of the three cupola plays identified on new improved seismic.
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Exxon Mobil walked away from its Blackbeard West well when temperatures and pressures became so great that there was fear in the corporate headquarters of another Exxon Valdez type of environmental catastrophe.
By then, they might also have happy news from a second well currently being drilled into Davy Jones (now at 24, 000 feet, going to 30, 000) and Blackbeard East (soon to undergo logging at 28, 500 feet).
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McMoran has since drilled a second well into Davy Jones (using a fatter pipe), proving that the reservoir structure stretches over 20, 000 acres, and is now drilling a second Blackbeard well, currently at a depth of 25, 200 feet.
With down-hole temperatures of 440 degrees F. and pressures of 27, 000 pounds per square inch, such depths proved too daunting and expensive for Exxon-Mobil (XOM), which sold its Blackbeard well, at the mouth of the Mississippi, to McMoRan in 2008.
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