CEAC then spans the great gap between the laboratory and the oil field. The field will be 8-10,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Exploratory drilling is only now approaching those depths. That means devising adequate materials to build a refinery on top of a thick forest of structural members standing nearly two miles high in the sea, surrounded by pipelines radiating to satellite oil wells as much as 60 miles away across the dark seabed, in highly pressured cold brine under the weight of an ocean. Nor could the exploration and production industry, or even the government.
Industry knows where the problems are.
To solve them takes not just the university, industry, or the government, but all of these. He sums up the significance of such cooperation. CEAC is the leading research organization in the world to guide industry's use of composites for deep water exploration and production.