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I'm uncertain about the ability of independent start-ups to gain much traction in the petroleum industry. Much of that has to do with owning/having access to f

I'm uncertain about the ability of independent start-ups to gain much traction in the petroleum industry. Much of that has to do with owning/having access to fleets of ships that are capable of bring you and your equipment to/from the right location on time. That said, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has indeed shown some light on potential niche fields that could be accessible to start-ups, e.g. Kevin Costner's Ocean Therapy device.

anamax 16y ago
> Much of that has to do with owning/having access to fleets of ships that are capable of bring you and your equipment to/from the right location on time. That's not the only way to build an oil company. There are lots of folks who rent an on-shore drilling rig. If you hit reasonable amounts of oil, transportation appears. Sometimes it's in the form of a guy who builds a pipeline from said small field to a place with better transportation. Those are two of the many ways that folks have built oil companies without fleets of ships and the like. (It's not just "dirty work" - there are many tech opportunities in oil-relevant data analysis.) For example, the only US billionare who died this year started his oil company with $10k and a pickup.