Oil Well - Cost

Cost

The cost of a well depends mainly on the daily rate of the drilling rig, the extra services required to drill the well, the duration of the well program (including downtime and weather time), and the remoteness of the location (logistic supply costs).

The daily rates of offshore drilling rigs vary by their capability, and the market availability. Rig rates reported by industry web service show that the deepwater water floating drilling rigs are over twice that of the shallow water fleet, and rates for jackup fleet can vary by factor of 3 depending upon capability.

With deepwater drilling rig rates in 2010 of around $420,000/day, and similar additional spread costs, a deep water well of duration of 100 days can cost around US$100 million.

With high performance jackup rig rates in 2010 of around $150,000, and similar service costs, a high pressure, high temperature well of duration 100 days can cost about US$30 million.

Onshore wells can be considerably cheaper, particularly if the field is at a shallow depth, where costs range from less than $1 million to $15 million for deep and difficult wells.

The total cost of an oil well mentioned does not include the costs associated with the risk of explosion and leakage of oil. Those costs include the cost of protecting against such disasters, the cost of the cleanup effort, and the hard-to-calculate cost of damage to the company's image.