Operators have gotten the message: high-pressure, high-temperature (HP/HT) technology has matured, opening up more oil resources in the Gulf of Mexico for development.
The oil and gas found at Anchor, Shenandoah, and North Platte (renamed Sparta) were unproducible until equipment manufacturers advanced the capabilities of existing technology to cope with the higher pressures and temperatures that are found in some of the Paleogene-aged reservoirs. The Gulf is home to two fields that have gone onstream using floating production hubs rated to handle 20,000 psi (20K). More 20K-psi projects are in the pipeline, of which three are additional hubs.
At the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston in May, operators and equipment manufacturers opened up about the HP/HT journey to date, the lessons they’ve learned, and the perpetual dream of equipment standardization.
Between 2006 and 2014, a number of lower tertiary Paleogene reservoirs were discovered. While exciting for the industry, they also posed challenges: they required subsea production technology rated above 15K psi, exceeding then-current capabilities, Richard White, senior subsea engineer at Chevron, said during the “Offshore HP/HT: Aligning Technical Excellence with Business Strategy” panel on 5 May.
Chevron started considering high-pressure technology for what would become the Anchor project as soon as it secured the lease, he said. The company acquired the six lease areas that comprise the Anchor area in lease sales in 2003 and 2008.
“We started doing the work even before it was a discovery,” he said.
