This new technology could put an additional five billion barrels of oil into production
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A breakthrough in oil production that producers say can safely produce high-pressure areas could put up to 5 billion barrels of crude previously unreachable into production, analysts say.
Chevron on Monday disclosed that it pumped the first oil from the field at 20,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, a third more than any previous well. Its $5.7 billion Anchor project uses specially designed equipment from NOV, Dril-Quip and drilling vessels from Transocean.
The No. 2 US oil company started pumping from the first Anchor well on Sunday, and the second has already been drilled and is close to being activated, said Bruce Niemeyer, head of oil exploration and production in America.
A 2010 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in Macondo killed 11 workers, contaminated fishing grounds and oiled beaches.
Transocean was the operator of the defunct Deepwater Horizon vessel and BP was the owner of the Macondo project. Both are involved in new, high pressure developments.
Today, the industry uses new drillships and equipment designed to withstand pressures that are three times greater than those experienced in the Macondo failure.
“The industry has done everything possible to deliver barrels safely, with new technology,” said Mfon Usoro, principal analyst focused on Gulf of Mexico operations at research firm Wood Mackenzie.
The new gear promises Chevron’s Anchor and similar projects of Beacon Offshore Energy and BP will deliver a combined 300,000 barrels of new oil, and put 2 billion barrels of previously unavailable US oil within producers’ reach, he said.
“These ultra-high pressure fields will be a major driver of production growth in the Gulf of Mexico,” Usoro said.
The Gulf of Mexico produced below the 2019 record level of 2 million barrels per day, and more oil could help restore the region to its peak output.
BP has its own high-pressure technology that it hopes can extract 10 billion known barrels of oil. Its first 20k project, Kaskida, was discovered in 2006 and was shelved due to lack of high-pressure technology.
Similar high-pressure, high-temperature oil fields that could benefit from the 20k technology are found offshore Brazil, Angola and Nigeria, said Aditya Ravi, an analyst at Rystad Energy. The Gulf of Mexico will be the proving ground for the new gear.
Brazil has large offshore developments that are “leading players in the use of future 20k technologies because of their high pressure, high temperature environment,” he said.
Including non-US fields, more than 5 billion barrels of known oil and gas reserves worldwide could benefit from this technology, Ravi said. Those volumes are equivalent to about 50 days of current global production.
–Gary McWilliams, Reuters
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