Offshore staff
LONDON — bp is targeting the North Sea and US shale basins to boost oil and gas supplies in the short term in response to the global energy crisis, its head of oil and gas operations told Reuters.
bp aims to cut its oil and gas output by 40%, or 1 MMboe/d between 2019 and 2030 as part of its strategy to slash greenhouse-gas emissions and build up a large renewables business, Reuters reported. But the company has boosted its spending on oil and gas in 2022 by $500 million in response to soaring energy prices and a supply crunch following years of under investment in the sector and in the wake of disruption to Russian supplies of gas to Europe.
Offshore focus
bp is focusing its short-term output growth in the North Sea, where it produces about 130,000 boe/d, as well as US shale fields, which produced 317,000 boe/d in the first half of the year, bp's head of Production and Operations Gordon Birrell told Reuters.
"We're pulling forward some North Sea projects," Birrell said. One such project is the Murlach Field, which is planned to start production in June 2025 and will be connected to the existing Eastern Trough Area Project platform 7 km away.
"Every one of our big fields has investment opportunities that we are doing as much as we can to move forward in time," Birrell said.
This North Sea news follows the recent announcement in August that bp is winding down its oil and gas exploration business in Mexico, according to a Bloomberg report. The move comes six years after its arrival following the opening of the energy sector to private companies as part of the 2013 energy reform. The subsidiary BP Exploration Mexico will conclude its participation in three exploration contracts in offshore blocks located in the Gulf of Mexico, two of them as operator and one as partner, which it was awarded in the auctions held by the Mexican government during the administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
In May, Britain’s North Sea Transition Authority awarded two carbon storage licenses in the southern North Sea to bp and Equinor, with an eight-year appraisal term. Under the terms of the agreed work programs, the licenses must demonstrate progress in achieving certain milestones, such as acquiring seismic surveys over the four proposed storage sites, and drilling wells to acquire data before applying for a storage permit.
US shale
bp became a major producer in the onshore US shale basins following a $10.5 billion acquisition from BHP in 2018. The company has invested heavily in technology to reduce the carbon emissions from its shale operations, known as BPX, including by electrifying drilling rigs in the oil-rich Permian Basin, Birrell said.
"The development phase is ongoing, and we are putting more capital into that in response to the energy crisis," he said. "Some of it is going straight into drilling and production, some of it going into reducing emissions of the facilities.”
"Production will keep growing in BPX, we want to keep growing that business," he said.
10.07.2022
