The friction caused by the gas bubble pushing up the pipe and displacing the drilling mud used to control the pressure could have created a static charge that ignited the gas into a fireball.

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Drilling holes every few dozen yards and pulling up pipe-shaped samples still leaves acres of mystery.

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Horizontal Drilling now allows these same operators to drill and set pipe for a mile or more horizontally through this same rock formation.

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Inside the riser pipe is a space about half a meter in diameter, large enough to hold the spinning drill pipe and bit and to allow the return flow of drilling fluid.

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Focusing on high-margin drilling technology and tools, Duroc-Danner spun off the drill-pipe business as Grant Prideco in 2000 and sold off capital-intensive barge rig and gas-compression businesses.

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Focusing on high-margin drilling technology and tools, Duroc-Danner spun off the drill-pipe business as Grant Prideco (nyse: GRP - news - people ) in 2000 and sold off capital-intensive barge rig and gas-compression businesses.

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Doug is convinced that drilling in deepwater is somehow better than shallow water even though you might have a mile of pipe sloshing around with the tides before you get to the seabed.

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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.

FORBES: Updated 11:30 Central.