Offshore staff
HOUSTON – bp has successfully started oil production at its Argos offshore platform in the deepwater US Gulf of Mexico (GoM).
With a gross production capacity of up to 140,000 bbl/d of oil, Argos is bp’s fifth platform in the GoM and the first new bp-operated production facility in the region since 2008.
The company said the semisubmersible platform ultimately will increase bp’s gross operated production capacity in the GoM by an estimated 20%. bp expects to safely and systematically ramp up production from Argos through 2023.
bp says Argos is the centerpiece of its Mad Dog Phase 2 project, which extends the life of the supergiant oil field discovered in 1998. It is one of nine high-margin major projects that bp plans start up by the end of 2025 globally.
Argos operates in 4,500 ft of water about 190 miles south of New Orleans and stands 27 stories tall. The platform has a deck the length and width of an American football field and weighs more than 60,000 tons.
bp is the operator with 60.5% working interest. Co-owners include Woodside Energy (23.9%) and Union Oil Co. of California, an affiliate of Chevron (15.6%).
In the deepwater GoM, bp operates five production platforms: Argos, Atlantis, Mad Dog, Na Kika and Thunder Horse. The company also holds interests in four non-operated hubs: Great White, Mars, Olympus and Ursa. bp anticipates its production in the US GoM to grow to about 400,000 boe/d net by the mid 2020s, and average 350,000 boe/d across the decade.
Speaking about Argos, Starlee Sykes, bp’s senior vice president, Gulf of Mexico and Canada, told Offshore, "A 20% increase in our gross operating capacity is massive for bp's throughput. Once it's slowly ramped up to plateau, it will be on the order of 140,000 barrels per day."
Digitalization
Argos is bp’s most digitally advanced platform operating in the GoM, featuring bp’s LoSal EOR and dynamic digital twin technologies. Argos has a waterflood injection capacity of more than 140,000 bbl/d of low-salinity water to help increase oil recovery from the Mad Dog Field. The platform also has a dynamic digital twin, a bp patent-pending software that links complex data from Argos to 3D digital models of those systems, allowing remote operators wearing virtual reality headsets to access data in real time to improve decision-making, efficiency and safety.
"The digital twin is basically a complete replica of the platform in digital space," Sykes explained. "We have all of our design data [and] all of our information can be accessible to engineers' office so that we can prepare for work offshore, prior to going and doing that. That helps us make our engineering, maintenance and other work more efficient and effective. And you can imagine a world where you had to have an engineer fly offshore, take measurements and assess how work gets done. We can now do all of that from the office using our digital twin."
04.13.2023
