Ten Empire State Buildings stacked in Colombia’s Caribbean barely touch the surface, and the drillship chasing a record at nearly 13,000 feet is punching through water most people picture as a coral sea

Somewhere in the blue water off Colombia’s northern coast, a drillship is preparing to do something no crew has ever done before.

The target sits nearly 13,000 feet below the surface of the Caribbean Sea.

That is not the depth of the well itself.

The well is called Komodo-1, named after the largest living lizard on Earth, a creature that prowls remote Indonesian islands thousands of miles from the Caribbean.

That is simply the depth of the water the pipe must pass through before it even reaches the seabed.

Beneath that floor, the drill will push on further still, chasing a reservoir of oil and gas in one of the most geologically promising and least explored frontiers in the western hemisphere.

One image helps: ten Empire State Buildings, stacked directly on top of each other, would only just reach the surface.

A sea floor no one has drilled before

The deepwater frontier has been moving outward for decades, one record at a time.

Each generation of drillship has reached a little further.

But the pace has accelerated sharply.

The driving force is simple: shale is maturing.

Oil and gas operators around the world are returning to the deep seas as production growth from North American shale fields slows, forcing companies to expand drilling elsewhere.

In 2024 alone, over 40 wells were expected to be drilled at depths of at least 1,500 meters globally, making it the busiest year for that category in a decade.

That shift is sending drill bits into places no one once thought reachable.

The record that has stood since Angola

The current mark was set in 2021 off the coast of Angola.

It is held by the Ondjaba-1 well, drilled by TotalEnergies using the Maersk Voyager drillship, reaching 3,628 meters of water depth.

That record has held for several years while the industry rebuilt after the price crashes of 2014 and 2016.

Now Colombia is coming for it.

The well sits in the Tayrona block off the northern coast of Colombia.

Occidental Petroleum and Ecopetrol aim to explore that block for oil and natural gas, in a project that could boost Colombia’s offshore production and diversify energy sources amid declining onshore output.

Extreme pressure and temperature conditions at 3,900 meters present considerable technical challenges at every stage of the operation.

The technology that made the impossible routine

What changed is the ability to see through the water column before a single meter of pipe is lowered.

Advances in marine seismic technology have enabled exploration at greater depths and distances, revolutionizing offshore oil drilling.

Ecopetrol’s offshore chief Elsa Jaimes has said that improved seismic technology, combined with Colombia’s vast unexplored offshore potential, is driving the push into these depths.

Better maps mean fewer surprises when a drillstring descends into total darkness.

SLB, the world’s biggest oilfield services provider, sees potential for more than $100 billion in offshore project commitments for 2024 and 2025.

Global deepwater oil and gas production is projected to increase by 60 percent by 2030.

Komodo-1: the name, the well, and the water around it

The well is called Komodo-1, named after the largest living lizard on Earth, a creature that prowls remote Indonesian islands thousands of miles from the Caribbean.

Occidental and Ecopetrol are targeting a water depth of around 3,900 meters, nearly 13,000 feet, which would shatter the current record set off Angola.

The Tayrona block lies off the same stretch of Colombian coastline that borders Tayrona National Natural Park, a region of coral reefs, seagrass beds, and one of the richest nearshore marine ecosystems in the Caribbean.

The contrast is almost surreal: an industrial machine of historic scale punching through the floor of one of the ocean’s most biodiverse neighborhoods.

It is the kind of tension that supply disruptions tend to sharpen, as producers hunt reserves far from any chokepoint.

If successful, the project could position Colombia as a significant offshore player in Latin America, attracting further investment.

What a successful drill would mean for Colombia and the industry

For Colombia, the stakes reach well beyond a record in a drilling logbook.

The country’s onshore fields are aging, and President Gustavo Petro has opposed new petroleum contracts, creating pressure on Ecopetrol to find reserves that fall outside the political debate about land.

Offshore is harder to argue against when energy security is at stake.

In the United States, the Department of the Interior announced that offshore oil production in 2025 totaled over 714 million barrels, the highest annual output on record.

The deep ocean is no longer a frontier of last resort: it is now a deliberate strategy.

For Occidental, whose focus on frontier exploration has taken it from the Permian Basin to Colombia’s deep Caribbean waters, Komodo-1 is a chance to prove that frontier exploration still holds genuine rewards.

If the pipe reaches its target depth and finds what the seismic surveys suggest is there, a well named after a dragon will have delivered something even bigger: proof that the deepest water on the production map just got deeper.