I have heard that BP wanted to drill much shallower but the EPA made them move deeper. Can the EPA have any bearing on where an oil company decides to drill their well?
It’s a complete myth that the environmental world, or the EPA, somehow “forced” oil companies into deep water, either in general or in any specific case. Shallow drilling continues right now, and will undoubtedly discover some relatively small oil and gas fields. There may be some constraints based on the particular lease blocks offered for bid; if no shallow blocks that companies believe will offer good potential are offered, of course no company will bid on them. They (big companies) are in deep water because that’s where the only likely undiscovered large-sized reservoirs lie. BP bid on that particular block because they were optimistic about its potential, and they could not have drilled “much shallower” because they did not have any rights to the shallower lease blocks. If they DID have rights to a shallow water lease block, then no one could have made them move to some other block that they (1) had no rights to and (2) had no optimism about drilling. The EPA probably has very lit
