New Drilling Technology To Tap Billions Of Barrels Of Oil
Photo: Reuters/Lee Celano
HOUSTON, TX (REUTERS) – An oil production breakthrough that producers say can safely tap ultra-high-pressure fields could put up to 5 billion barrels of previously inaccessible crude into production, analysts said.
Chevron on August 12 disclosed it had pumped its first oil from a field at 20,000 pounds per square inch pressures, a third greater than any prior well. Its $5.7 billion Anchor project employs specially designed equipment from NOV, Dril-Quip and drill ships from Transocean.
The firm began pumping from the first Anchor well on August 11, with the second already drilled and close to being ready to turn on.
A 2010 blowout at Gulf of Mexico’s Macondo prospect killed 11 workers, fouled fisheries and covered area beaches in oil.
Transocean was the operator of the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon vessel and BP was the owner of the Macondo project. Both are involved in the new, higher pressure well developments.
Today, the industry is employing new drill ships and equipment that has been created to cope with the extreme pressures that are a third greater than encountered in the Macondo failure.
The Gulf of Mexico has produced below the record 2019 level of 2 million barrels per day, and the additional oil could help return the region to its peak output.
BP has its own high-pressure technology it hopes can tap 10 billion barrels of known oil. Its first 20k project, Kaskida, was discovered in 2006 and put aside because of a lack of high-pressure technology.
Similar high-pressure, high-temperature oil fields that would benefit from the 20k technology are found off the coasts of Brazil, Angola and Nigeria, said Aditya Ravi, a Rystad Energy analyst. The Gulf of Mexico will be the proving ground for the new gear.
Brazil has major offshore developments that “are prime candidates for future 20k technology application due to their complex high pressure, high temperature environments,” he said.
Including non-U.S. fields, more than 5 billion barrels of known oil and gas of known resources globally could benefit from the technology, Ravi said. Those volumes equate to about 50 days of current global production.
