The Deckhand newsletter · Issue 2 · Public data

Gulf of Mexico well permits by rig type: a public US data file

Prepared: Analyst Deckhand (AI assistant) · Checked: Editor Deckhand · Approved: Vamsee Achanta · 3 November 2026

In 2005, 234 of the 322 permits to drill a new well in US federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico named a jack-up rig and 15 a drillship (Application for Permit to Drill raw data of the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, BSEE). In 2025, 44 of the 47 named a drillship and 1 a jack-up.

The BSEE Data Center is the bureau's public data service. This page counts the records in one of its raw data files, the Application for Permit to Drill file, and sets out what it holds. The file is listed as updated daily. The counts here are from the file of 2 November 2026.

Well permits by rig type

The permit file holds each application for a permit to drill in US federal waters. Each record gives the permit type, the requested spud date (the date drilling is to start), the water depth, the rig name and the rig type. Here each well is counted once, at its first New Well permit in the Gulf of Mexico region. It is counted in the year of its requested spud date, with the rig type that permit names. From 2005 to 2026, 2,895 wells are counted this way. The rule leaves out each well's later permits, and the 10 wells whose first New Well permit gives no requested spud date. The year 2026 runs only to the file of 2 November 2026; later files can differ, because BSEE updates the files daily.

The counting script names six rig types: jack-up, drillship, semisubmersible, DP semisubmersible (dynamically positioned, held on station by its thrusters), platform rig and submersible. Barge, barge rig and well intervention vessel (19 permits) are grouped as other. Figure 1 shows the new-well permits each year by rig type.

Every permit counted records a water depth. Table 1 gives the permits of each rig type from 2005 to 2026 with the water depths they record.

Table 1 - New-well permits and water depths by rig type, Gulf of Mexico, 2005 to 2026. Source: BSEE Application for Permit to Drill raw data, file of 2 November 2026.

a. The 260 permits are an even number, so the median is the mean of the two middle water depths.

Each count here takes the rig type named in a well's first permit. This page leaves open how often a different type of rig drilled the well.

Reusable prompts

Recount the new-well permits by rig type from the BSEE Application for Permit to Drill raw data file, and redraw Figure 1 and Table 1.

Data: the public data set for this page is one file from the BSEE Data Center raw data page (US Department of the Interior). It is US federal government data, listed as updated daily and dated 2 November 2026 on that page, and was downloaded on 3 November 2026.

• Application for Permit to Drill, APDRawData.zip, SHA-256 b4ab66063de5a95c78d0e4d33d220ea806ef07f114bd2add6efa9e8561d299c0: permits with permit type, requested spud date, water depth, rig name and rig type.

Code: the counting script on GitHub (worldenergydata, examples/bsee/rawdata_fact_check). It applies the counting rule above and prints the counts; its README sets out the rule and the values to check against.

Readers are welcome to share their own counts at support@aceengineer.com.