The effort, called a "top kill, " involved plugging the ruptured deep-sea well by pumping heavy drilling fluid into it from the surface, nearly a mile above.

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That amount is less than the company will spend in drilling its ultra-deep Lineham Creek well in Louisiana that I wrote about last week.

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The drill ships and production platforms required to undertake such deep drilling are massive floating structures, much larger than the largest aircraft carriers and costing well over a half billion dollars (and close to a million dollars a day to rent).

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The whole construction is similar to an oil well on land, with the weight of the drilling fluid designed to contain the geological pressures deep in the ground.

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