Oil Gleaners

Giant reservoirs are getting hard to find. So Weatherford helps oil companies pick over the fields that are already on the map.

Of the 25,000 wells Weatherford International (nyse: WFT - news - people ) helped drill last year, the gnarliest was in the Knotty Head prospect in the Gulf of Mexico. For nine months the ship Transocean Discoverer Spirit used 360-degree rotating propellers to hold itself steady in the 3,500-foot-deep water as diamond-tipped bits cut the deepest oil well ever--6.5 miles down. Completed in December at a cost of some $70 million, Knotty Head will generate many years of income for owners Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ), Anadarko, BHP Billiton and Nexen (nyse: NXY - news - people ). Sensors suggest a 600-foot-thick zone of spongy rock holding millions of barrels

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