There's A Hole At The Bottom Of The Sea

But that's perfectly OK, because it's supposed to be there.  Well, eventually.

With Subsea Compression Technology, Offshore Platforms Could Become Obsolete

OSLO – Lying at the bottom of a giant water-filled pit in western Norway, a thousand-tonne gas compressor is humming along, going through gruelling tests as engineers prepare it to change oil and gas production for good... 

Pushing the limits of subsea innovation, Shell and Norway’s Statoil are now racing to build the world’s first subsea gas compression unit, a key building block in the “subsea factory,” which would all but eliminate the need for many platforms... 

Once the integration is complete, the technology can be standardized, eventually creating smaller and more portable modules that can be deployed more rapidly and on a smaller scale, allowing firms to develop fields previously considered too small to make a platform worth while.

Very interesting.  On one hand, the companies that are looking at this are not the kind of people who like to pour money into something that is completely unfeasible.  Not to mention the fact that they have a whole heck of a lot of experience in these particular domains.

On the other hand, the technology is only a decade away, so you may want to read the article with whatever grains of salt you might have handy.