New drilling technology to bring billions of barrels of oil within reach, analysts say
HOUSTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) – A breakthrough in oil production, which producers say could allow safe development of high-pressure fields, could enable the production of up to five billion barrels of previously inaccessible crude, analysts said.
Chevron said Monday it had pumped first oil from a field at a pressure of 20,000 pounds per square inch, a third more than any previous well. Its $5.7 billion Anchor project is using specially designed equipment from NOV, Dril-Quip and drillships from Transocean.
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The second-largest U.S. oil company began production from its first Anchor well on Sunday; the second has already been drilled and is almost ready for operation, said Bruce Niemeyer, head of U.S. oil exploration and production.
An oil spill in 2010 off the Macondo oil field in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven workers, polluted fishing grounds and flooded beaches in the region with oil.
Transocean was the operator of the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon and BP BP.L was the owner of the Macondo project. Both are involved in the development of new high-pressure wells.
Today, the industry is deploying new drilling ships and equipment designed to withstand extreme pressures that are one-third higher than those experienced during the Macondo disaster.
“The industry has done its part to deliver barrels safely using new technology,” said Mfon Usoro, a senior analyst at research firm Wood Mackenzie who focuses on oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The new equipment promises that Chevron’s Anchor and similar projects by Beacon Offshore Energy and BP will together deliver 300,000 barrels of new oil and make two billion barrels of previously unavailable U.S. oil available to producers, she said.
“These extremely high pressure fields will be a key driver of production growth in the Gulf of Mexico,” Usoro added.
Production in the Gulf of Mexico is below 2019’s record 2 million barrels per day, and the additional oil could help the region return to peak production.
BP has its own high-pressure technology with which it hopes to develop 10 billion barrels of known oil. The first 20,000-barrel project, Kaskida, was discovered in 2006 and shelved due to a lack of high-pressure technology.
Similar high-pressure, high-temperature oil fields that would benefit from the 20k technology lie off the coasts of Brazil, Angola and Nigeria, said Aditya Ravi, an analyst at Rystad Energy. The Gulf of Mexico will be the testing ground for the new equipment.
Brazil has significant offshore projects that “are prime candidates for the application of future 20k technology due to their complex high-pressure and high-temperature environments,” he said.
Including fields outside the U.S., more than 5 billion barrels of oil and gas from known resources worldwide could benefit from the technology, Ravi said. These amounts correspond to about 50 days of current global production.
(Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Jamie Freed)
