BP bets big, again, on the Gulf of Mexico
THUNDER HORSE OIL PLATFORM—This hulking production base 150 miles offshore from New Orleans has long embodied BP’s outsize ambitions in the Gulf of Mexico and also reflected its recurring setbacks. Stretching roughly three football fields and pumping crude from more than a mile below the water’s surface, Thunder Horse in 2005 was found listing so precariously that it appeared in danger of sinking. Once it got roaring in 2008, three years behind schedule, it helped BP cement its position as one of the Gulf’s leading producers, capable of some of the industry’s biggest technical marvels.
Then in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon explosion caused the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, costing the British company more than $60 billion and years of political and reputational damage. Now three chief executives and 14 years later, BP is again betting big on the Gulf.
Thunder Horse is entrenched as one of the company’s steadiest producers, and a new production platform, called Argos, went online last year. At about one-third of the size, Argos links to subsea wells and has the capacity to produce more than half as much oil—roughly 140,000 barrels a day. BP, which will report earnings next week, has set its sights on harder-to-reach deposits in the Gulf, requiring drilling techniques to cope with more-intense pressures and higher temperatures.
In March, new CEO Murray Auchincloss was asked on stage at a Houston energy conference what business he’s most excited about. His answer: the Gulf of Mexico. More specifically, Auchincloss called out the Paleogene, a geological layer dating back as far as 60-plus million years and where BP first discovered oil more than a decade ago.
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