In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster 15 years ago and the simultaneous shale oil boom, the oil and gas industry focused its attention on the onshore U.S. and today\u2019s record-high oil and gas production.<\/p>
But the Gulf of Mexico is quietly making a crude oil comeback thanks to new technologies and cost efficiencies utilizing existing deepwater platforms. The trend continued with Chevron bringing its big Ballymore project online April 21 that will ramp up to produce about 75,000 barrels of oil per day.<\/p>
The other factor in the Gulf is increased regulatory and policy support under the Trump administration, which will ramp up the number of offshore lease sales and has renamed the body of water the Gulf of America within the U.S.<\/p>
There are fewer players in the Gulf because of consolidation and costs, but Chevron, Shell, and BP are still growing and leading the way, along with smaller players such as Murphy Oil, Talos Energy, and LLOG Exploration.<\/p>
\u201cThe thing that ties all of these projects together is our ability to deliver projects on time and on budget,\u201d Chevron president Bruce Niemeyer told Fortune. \u201cThe Gulf has a natural advantage to be low-carbon-intensity oil that\u2019s an affordable and reliable source of energy for the country.\u201d<\/p>
The Gulf is producing near record highs of 1.9 million barrels of oil per day, but that\u2019s still only 14% of the nation\u2019s world-leading high of 13.5 million barrels daily.
\u201cThey [Big Oil players] are looking around the world and exploring again,\u201d said Jim Rogers, vice chairman of the Petrie Partners energy advisory firm. \u201cAnd the Gulf\u2019s ultra-deepwater counts as new exploration.\u201d<\/p>
While new steel tariffs and subdued oil prices certainly don\u2019t help, new efficiencies are making offshore projects that were previously uneconomic more cost competitive with onshore again Rogers said, even if the numbers of deepwater producers will remain smaller.<\/p>
Niemeyer, who oversees Americas exploration and production for Chevron, said the key for Ballymore is it was completed in just three years, which is very fast for complicated, multibillion-dollar projects in deepwater depths of more than 6,000 feet.<\/p>
The Ballymore project\u2014owned 60% by Chevron and 40% by France\u2019s TotalEnergies\u2014consists of three large wells connected to the existing but newly modified Blind Faith platform in the deepwater Gulf.<\/p>
The bigger milestone, Chevron\u2019s Anchor project, came online last fall as the first Gulf project ever developed in a high-pressure, high-temperature environment with newly developed technologies and equipment that can withstand 20,000 PSI pressure.<\/p>
\u201cIn the case of Anchor, it was the first in the world with new technology,\u201d Niemeyer said. \u201cNobody to this point other than Chevron has a 20,000-PSI project that\u2019s in operation.<\/p>
\u201cOn the other side of the spectrum is Ballymore, in which the discovery happened to be close to existing infrastructure. It gave us the option of being able to tie it back to an existing facility.\u201d<\/p>
The Ballymore project makes Chevron the second operator in the emerging Jurassic-period Norphlet play in the Gulf after Shell, said Miles Sasser, senior research analyst for the Wood Mackenzie energy research firm.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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But the Gulf of Mexico is quietly making a crude oil comeback thanks to new technologies and cost efficiencies utilizing existing deepwater platforms. The trend continued with Chevron bringing its big Ballymore project online April 21 that will ramp up to produce about 75,000 barrels of oil per day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1623,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test7.samplewebsitelink.com\/jamesryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}