• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 36 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 3 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 5 hours If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 4 days Oil Stocks, Market Direction, Bitcoin, Minerals, Gold, Silver - Technical Trading <--- Chris Vermeulen & Gareth Soloway weigh in
  • 5 days The European Union is exceptional in its political divide. Examples are apparent in Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belarus, Ireland, etc.
  • 18 hours Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
  • 4 days "What’s In Store For Europe In 2023?" By the CIA (aka RFE/RL as a ruse to deceive readers)
New Tech Could Make Hydrogen Cars a Commercial Reality

New Tech Could Make Hydrogen Cars a Commercial Reality

South Korean researchers have developed…

Venezuela Braces for the Return of U.S. Sanctions

Venezuela Braces for the Return of U.S. Sanctions

Venezuela is preparing for the…

Why OPEC Should Be Worried About Oil Demand Forecasts

Why OPEC Should Be Worried About Oil Demand Forecasts

Demand forecasts from the IEA,…

Tsvetana Paraskova

Tsvetana Paraskova

Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

More Info

Premium Content

BP Unlocks One Billion Barrels In Gulf Of Mexico With New Tech

Earlier this decade, BP and the Gulf of Mexico was an awkward and uneasy collocation for the UK oil supermajor after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Nearly a decade and more than US$60 billion in damages paid later, BP has now turned the corner in its U.S. Gulf of Mexico operations and plans for significant production and project expansion into the next decade.

BP’s two key pillars of growth are raising production from fields close to existing hubs, and using advanced seismic technology and analytics to better identify the resources at its oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the past few years, BP, like many other major oil companies, has been increasingly using advanced new technologies to search for more oil while cutting costs and time for seismic image analysis.

BP has created Wolfspar, a seismic source technology that can ‘see’ beneath the salt in the Gulf of Mexico to enable better planning for where to drill for oil. The tech acquires low-frequency seismic signals and could help BP to estimate how much oil there is still left in the Atlantis, Thunder Horse, and Mad Dog developments, BP executives say.

Thanks to advanced proprietary seismic imaging and reservoir characteristics analysis, BP has now identified an additional 1 billion barrels of oil in place at its Thunder Horse field, and an additional 400 million barrels of oil in place at the Atlantis field, the UK supermajor said this week.

BP’s proprietary algorithms to enhance seismic imaging allow seismic data that would have previously taken a year to analyze to be processed in only a few weeks, the company says.   Related: Oil Posts Longest Rally In 17 Months

While it has identified more than a billion barrels of oil at its oil fields, BP also approved the expansion of the Atlantis field which it operates, with the US$1.3-billion Atlantis Phase 3 development as part of its strategy to grow advantaged oil production through its existing production facilities in the Gulf. 

Atlantis field co-owner BHP, which holds 44 percent, is expected to make a final investment decision on Atlantis Phase 3 in early 2019.  

“BP’s Gulf of Mexico business is key to our strategy of growing production of advantaged high-margin oil,” Bernard Looney, BP’s Upstream chief executive, said in a statement.

“And these fields are still young – only 12% of the hydrocarbons in place across our Gulf portfolio have been produced so far. We can see many opportunities for further development, offering the potential to continue to create significant value through the middle of the next decade and beyond.”

BP, currently the top oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, aims to raise its production to 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day (boed) by the mid 2020s, up from 300,000 boed currently. Over the past five years, the company has increased its net production by more than 60 percent from the sub-200,000 boed it was producing in 2013.

The growth is expected to come from recent project startups, including Thunder Horse Northwest and Thunder Horse South expansions and the Thunder Horse Water Injection project, plus a second platform at the Mad Dog field, scheduled to come online in late 2021.

BP will also be weighing future potential developments at Atlantis and Thunder Horse, subsea tiebacks at the Na Kika field, and Mad Dog field extensions. Related: Why 2019 Will Be A Record Breaking Year For LNG

It’s not only BP that is actively pursuing additional oil developments in the Gulf of Mexico. According to Wood Mackenzie, 2019 could be a historic year for the region as exploration activity is expected to increase by 30 percent, ending four consecutive years of steady declines. While Shell and Chevron will lead to way in exploration drilling, the actual growth is expected to come from new entrants--Kosmos Energy, Equinor, Total, Murphy, and Fieldwood, according to the energy consultancy.

This year could also be the year of a major world-first project to reach a final investment decision (FID), while a Gulf-first project is expected to start up production. If Chevron moves forward with its Anchor project in Green Canyon Block 807, it would be the first ultra-high-pressure project in the world to reach FID, WoodMac said, noting that if the project reaches final approval, it could lead to more than US$10 billion of investment into the region.

ADVERTISEMENT

The industry will also be closely watching Shell’s Appomattox development, scheduled to come online this year, marking the first production ever from a Jurassic reservoir in the Gulf of Mexico.

“If the Jurassic roars to life in 2019, it could give operators greater confidence in the play’s potential,” said William Turner, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment
  • Mamdouh G Salameh on January 09 2019 said:
    In the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration pursued what looked like a vendetta against the UK-owned BP virtually bankrupting it by making it pay $60 bn in damages with the probable intention of making it an easy prey to an American predator.

    By comparison, ExxonMobil only paid about $2 bn in clean-up costs and $1.8 bn for habitat restoration and personal damages related to Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in 1989 despite the fact that it was the worst oil spill in US history until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The Exxon Valdez oil slick covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales. Nearly 30 years later, pockets of crude oil remain in some locations.

    Yet, BP returns to the Gulf of Mexico, the place of what could have been its demise, with plans for significant production and project expansion having identified an additional 1 billion barrels (bb) of oil in place at its Thunder Horse field and an additional 400 million barrels of oil in place at the Atlantis field.

    Assuming a Recovery Factor (R/F) of 50% and an oil price of $70 a barrel by the time this new discovery begins production, this could earn BP some $49 bn. But as accidents of spillage can’t be avoided, another accident could cost BP probably far more than it could be earning from the new reserves given its history of spillage and leakage accidents in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere in the United States.

    This begs the question as to whether BP could be better advised to sell the new field to an American oil company and invest its money somewhere more forgiving than the US.

    Mamdouh G. Salameh
    International Oil Economist
    Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London
  • Jeffrey Pickett on January 09 2019 said:
    Is the tech applicable onshore ie. over hangs?
  • Bill Simpson on January 11 2019 said:
    The new technology of precision horizontal drilling, fracking, and sand propping, changed land drilling, opening up billions of barrels of oil and gas production from deeply buried thin layers of oil bearing rock.
    Who knows how much additional oil and gas the new BP seismic technology might discover. The impact might rival the total additional oil which recent advances in horizontal drilling and fracking has enabled to be produced. And you can't produce oil which you don't first locate.

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News