Deep-sea Scientific Drilling Hit By A Cost Double Whammy

摘要

As the oil industry gears up for the ongoing offshore-oil boom, scientists who study the sea floor say competition for scarce drilling resources is leaving them high and dry. "Funding goes down, oil goes up," laments paleo-ceanographer Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Facing soaring costs and lengthening delays, the United States component of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)-the current phase of the cooperative international investigation beneath the sea floor-has been literally stuck in dry dock, leading to an unprecedented 3-year hiatus in U.S. drilling.