Chevron to Drill 5 Miles Deep in Gulf of Mexico for World's Largest Oil Reserves

Here's a great story on an effort by Chevron to exploit what some consider the largest untapped oil reserves in the world, deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The technology is advanced and incredibly expensive, but soon Chevron will have accomplished the deepest drilling in open water.

Obviously, this is important from a national security perspective. If the oil field, dubbed "Jack," is indeed as large as believed (between 3 and 15 billion barrels), then it will significantly reduce the US's reliance on foreign oil. For those who want the US to reduce its involvement in the Middle East, this should be welcome news.

It also points out the importance of oil company profits--without them, oil companies would be unable to make these kinds of investments. Political (and most often crudely populist) efforts to curtail their profits only limits America's energy options.

Eventually, of course, technology will be developed and/or exploited (e.g., nuclear power) that will finally render fossil fuels as unecessary. Until then, it's encouraging that these sorts of efforts are underway, and we can only hope that more such efforts will be made.