When people talk about a relief well, they are actually talking about directional, or slant drilling. Originally, drilling was done vertically. But geological formations and tinhorn drillers cramming too much weight on the bit to make hole caused the bit to wander out of vertical. It was noticed by producing wells on one property producing less after a hole was drilled into adjacent properties.

Remember the first Gulf War when Saddam invaded Kuwait? That was his excuse — he claimed Kuwait stuck its straw into his hole.

Oil companies found that more product could be reached by drilling into a reservoir on an angle, even horizontally, than by drilling straight down. So an entire industry has formed manufacturing and deploying very sophisticated steerable drilling heads and downhole motors.

Now, when a drilling rig is rigged up on location, they may drill several holes, holes that fan out in different directions, before being taken down and moved to a different location. The technology is invaluable for drilling under lakes from shore, or even drilling under a town from the outskirts.

When I was roughnecking, we only had two trailers on a location — the pusher shack and the company man. These days it looks like a trailer park. All that extra housing is for the directional drilling people.

But gouging holes this way and that way is entirely different than hitting a seven-inch target 5,000 feet underwater and another 13,000 feet below the sea bed.

In Australia, it took them 5 attempts to hit a 10-inch target in water about 250 feet deep and total depth of less than half what is involved with the Deepwater Horizon blow-out.

The challenges are immense, even with all the gee-whiz technology.

Currently, BP has two rigs on site, both attempting to drill a relief well at the same time. As the world watches, one can only imagine the grim determination they go about their work. A fair amount of friendly bets and smack talking between the rigs is guaranteed.

God speed my friends. God speed.