(FORTUNE Magazine) – Going to the ends of the earth in search of oil is nothing new, although going to the depths of the ocean is. During the past 50 years, much of the oil under the shallows of the Gulf of Mexico has been tapped out. But geologists have long suspected that huge amounts of oil lie farther out, in deeper waters. The problem is, building a conventional oil rig in water that deep would be prohibitively expensive. Which is why Conoco, along with driller R&B Falcon, commissioned the Deepwater Pathfinder, the first in a new class of deep-water drill ships.

Very simply, the Pathfinder is a hybrid, half ship and half oil rig. Completed late last year in a yard in South Korea, the ship sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and on Jan. 30 "spudded" (oilspeak for "began drilling") the Magnolia well in 5,000 feet of water, 160 miles off Lafayette, La. Why there? Well, that's where the 3-D seismic geological scan looked most compelling.

Once the ship was parked, the captain's and the sailors' jobs became rather boring. Their duty: to ensure that the ship's six 5,300-horsepower thrusters, linked by computers to a global positioning unit, kept the vessel steady to within 1 1/2 meters.

That's when the other half of the ship's population, the drill crews--who commute out on helicopters--began their work in earnest. Teams of roughnecks and drillers assembled the riser, or pipe, that goes down to the sea floor. Then the drill bit was lowered and drilling began. Endless sections of 90-foot pipe were slipped down into the casing, so that the well could reach its total targeted depth of some 18,000 feet. An unmanned remote-controlled sub was dispatched periodically to the wellhead on the sea floor to check the equipment there. And then, after only three months of work, they struck oil! How much, and of what quality? It will take years of tests to determine that and up to five years to start pumping if the oil is commercially viable.

Actually, the oil most likely won't be pumped by the Pathfinder but by some sort of floating pumping station or another boat. If need be, though, the Pathfinder could do the job. (It holds up to 100,000 barrels.) Fact is, the drill ship can do just about anything Conoco wants--except make the price of oil go up.