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if all schedules hold, Anadarko’s Lucius, feature the US Gulf’s second foating, multi-zone frac-packs employed at Jack/

Chevron’s Big Foot, Exxon Mobil’s Hadrian production, storage and offoading vessel St. Malo and the various subsea boosting

South, Noble’s Big Bend-Dantzler, Deep with a disconnectible turret system, lazy systems being employed at Perdido, Jack/

Gulf’s Kodiak and LLOG’s Delta House.

wave risers and polyester moorings (OE: St. Malo, Julia and Stones.

September 2014). Julia will feature the In drilling technology, Statoil and Next year, Anadarko’s Heidelberg and

Gulf’s frst high integrity pressure protec- Chevron are leading the way in trying Noble’s Gunfint, also developing non- tion system, which is intended to isolate to commercialize ways to reach deeper Lower Tertiary geology, are scheduled to

Gulf of Mexico equipment downstream of the wellhead targets with fewer casing strings and come online. Further out, Hess is work- from higher pressures. It is technology more control of borehole pressure. Statoil ing toward frst production at Stampede proven elsewhere in the world but likely is deploying Enhanced Drilling’s EC-Drill in 2018.

to be important for future Lower Tertiary system. Chevron opting for dual-gradient

Development surge in Miocene developments. drilling (OE: October 2014).

Statoil has put the EC-Drill system on

Even if oil prices hadn’t dropped, “From a development point of view, this the Maersk Developer and has employed development costs using technology year, we don’t see a slowdown in activity. the system on at least one well, Perseus, already available had become a big issue. We see a higher level of spend,” Khan which turned out to be non-commercial.

Service companies as well as oil compa- says. “Part of the reason is just the num-

Statoil also used the Developer to drill nies like BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips ber of projects in the fnal stages of being

Yeti, where it made a discovery in late are teaming up to cut development costs. brought online.”

April. The Developer moves next to the

A recent example: FMC and Technip, And u-HPHT technology is not the

Thorvald prospect.

have formed Forsys Subsea to increase only area of innovation. Upcoming effciency of feld design and construc- Statoil, which has used EC-Drill in shal- 2015-16 projects focus on new ways to tion and thereby help control costs. lower water wells offshore of Norway, has increase effciency and cut cost.

Lowering contractor costs may, in fact, declined to discuss EC-Drill’s performance Anadarko is pursuing the design-one, soften the impact of lower oil prices, on deeper water prospects in the Gulf. build-two concept with nearly identical

Wood Mackenzie said in a recent report, “They want enough time and experience spars at Lucius and at Heidelberg, the lat- making it economical in future years to to sort out what it does and doesn’t do ter due online next year. LLOG is advanc- move forward with developments cur- well,” says Jim Schwartz, Statoil’s spokes- ing standardization in development of its rently too costly to pursue. man in Houston. Delta House hub and surrounding felds.

Chevron has been preparing for In future Miocene activity, Shell is

Sampling, boosting advances months to commercialize its system moving forward with front-end engineer-

Other production technology advances using the DGD-equipped drillship the ing and design for its Vito discovery, in the Lower Tertiary include the Pacifc Santa Ana. But so far the com- and BP has fled a long-awaited revised subsea sampling system and single-trip pany has not discussed results. It is development plan for Mad Dog 2 aimed unclear whether the technology was used at reducing development costs.

on the recent discovery at Anchor or a But how fast those projects become subsequent prospect, Sicily. reality depends on the future direction of

While research and experimentation con- oil prices.

tinues in Lower Tertiary technology, devel-

BP has won regulatory approval for its opment hasn’t slowed yet in the deepwater new Mad Dog 2 plan, featuring a semisub-

Gulf’s more familiar Miocene trend.

mersible production platform rather than

By the end of this year, six major projects the originally planned spar, but executives – all tapping parts of the Miocene and-or have told investors the project probably nearby Pliocene – will have come online, will be delayed and re-evaluated again.

And future exploration – the neces-

SBM Ofshore’s Turritella sary lead-in to developments beyond

FPSO will be the second the 2015-16 surge — is less certain. deployed in the Gulf of

Companies are slowing the pace as a

Mexico for Shell’s Stones signifcant number of rigs go off contract development. this year and next, Khan says.

Images from SBM Ofshore.

Both the Baker Hughes and US govern- ment tallies of rig activity in the Gulf – though using different methodologies and including both exploration and development drilling – fell by more than 20 in 1Q 2015, Baker Hughes’ to 35, the government’s to 47.

“On the exploration side, our view is it’s likely to plateau or maybe pull back marginally. We’ve had some pretty good years in terms of discoveries the last three years. It’s been a nice uptrend, but we see that plateauing off,” Khan says.

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