For several years, the offshore drilling fraternity has been striving towards the goal of "riserless" drilling for operations in very deep water. The promise of this technique perhaps less confusingly known as "dual gradient" lies in it providing drilling engineers with the means to mirror much more closely the natural pressure conditions to be found in a borehole as it is steadily extended to a final destination usually many thousands of feet below the seabed.
Ironically,
