Probing the Last Frontier

Oil wildcatting has always been a romantic art: the big gamble, the bigger payoff, always seem to be just "one more hole away." With the world's sudden realization of its dependence on petroleum and the prices that "black gold" has been bringing, wildcatting has taken on a new frenzy. Much of the world's unexplored oil wealth lies largely offshore, and this winter hundreds of hopeful gamblers are working round the clock in the freezing storms of the Canadian continental shelf. TIME Correspondent James Wilde recently visited one rig 96 miles southwest of Halifax, N.S. His report:

A 50-m.p.h. gale is blowing in a blinding sheet of snow. The seas are pounding in 15-ft. waves, and all sensible fishermen have long since headed for port. But here, in the glare of arc lamps, heavily clothed figures are wrestling with craneloads of drill casings, dancing about on the slippery, freezing deck like madmen. No need to shout here: the screaming wind and throbbing drill machinery make conversation next to impossible.

This is an oil-exploration barge, a triangular island almost an acre in size that is towed "on location" atop three sturdy stilts that float on huge pontoons. The pontoons are then filled with water and submerged 146 ft., giving the barge the stability of an iceberg. The barge is securely steadied by electronically controlled ballast and nine anchors while its drill probes into the sea bottom 340 ft. below. Already the drill is bringing up samples from 2,000 ft. below the shelf. The samples are carefully analyzed for hints of oil, but the drill may have to bite as deep as 17,000 ft. to find a real gusher. The rig itself costs upward of $20 million to build and more than $45,000 a day to operate.

Small Pockets. This barge, one of four scattered across the angry seascape of the Canadian continental shelf, belongs to SEDCO, Inc. and is leased to Shell Oil for a five-hole exploration at an estimated cost of $11.5 million. So far, only one wildcatter on this portion of the shelf has found any oil, and that was only in small pockets. But Gil Baucheis, "tool pusher" or chief honcho aboard SEDCO's barge, points out that wildcatters drilled in the North Sea for ten years before striking huge reserves.

The barge's 20-man drilling crew, which work twelve-hour shifts, are a rugged bunch, mostly from Canada's maritime provinces. They make $4.60 to $7 an hour, spending two weeks on the barge followed by one week off. Nearly every aspect of oil-rig life is designed to speed the race for oil, from plentiful food (four steaks for some at midday dinner) to strictly enforced rules (no booze on board).

"Life here is all 'arse up and head down,' " says Crew Member Patrick Baron. Roughneck Leo Cariou, a veteran of 14 years in oilfields round the world, explains: "It's part adventure, part backbreaking toil, a big part loneliness. We are the adventurers of the energy business, and the oceans are our last frontier to exploit." That is a notion not often expressed here on the barge; the relentless search for oil affords time for little but the mind-numbing and muscle-aching work that grinds along in hopes of the big payoff.

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