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Onshore, a 10,000-ft.-deep well can be brought in for $100,000 v. close to $500,000 offshore. The price of everything oilmen need goes up at sea. The spindle-legged offshore drill platforms cost $1,000,000 to $5.000.000 each. They easily can be wrecked: several have been toppled by storms or in other accidents. Offshore workers command premium pay (more than $1,000 a month for a skilled "drill pusher"), and on a common tour of duty they work six twelve-hour days, then get six days off. Shipping the oil to shore comes to 75¢ or 90¢ a barrel. Summed up one oilman: "We are investing money offshore on the scale of a foreign oil development. But we are taking back our profits under strict federal and state control. By comparison, producing in Arabia or Venezuela, even with a fifty-fifty royalty deal, pays better."
Better Chances. Many U.S. operators are indeed shifting their money from tricky offshore drilling at home to the surer onshore operation of foreign fields, even though the chances of making a wildcat strike under water are much better than on land. Of the wildcat wells sunk off Louisiana's coast, about 40% have become producers, v. the U.S. on-land average of 11%. The offshore potential is huge. Geologists estimate conservatively that 12 billion bbl. of oil and 40 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas are locked in the offshore sands. Its total market value: $40 billion. But oilmen are beginning to worry that the oil will cost more to find and get out than it is worth.
*At least $98 million of the lease payments are held in escrow pending a final decision on who owns the tidelands—the states or the Federal Government. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court gave the five Gulf States 45 days to rebut a Department of Justice suit which claims that the U.S. holds title to all undersea lands located more than three miles from shore— meaning most of the oil-bearing offshore lands.