From Houston (BN): Shell has begun FEED on its Vito (SEN, 31/1) deepwater development in the Gulf of Mexico.
The project, with production to peak at 100,000boe/d, will be a floating production system - a semi, spar or tension leg platform all remain under consideration - capable of receiving up to four subsea tiebacks. Anadarko drilled the original discovery well in Mississippi Canyon 984 in 1,235m in 2009 about 200km southeast of New Orleans. It later transferred the operatorship to Shell.
It is now part of a four-block unit and owned by Shell (51.33%) Statoil (30%) and Freeport-McMoRan (18.67%). The lease was acquired in 2001 by Shell and Spinnaker.
SEN understands that the decision on the floater type will be made once FEED has identified the preferred method of providing pressure support. Conventional water injection is not considerate appropriate in this type of reservoir and there has been some talk about a the use of a low salinity solution. BP has been a leading proponent of LoSal technology for water injection.
Coulomb go-ahead
Shell has also given the official go-ahead for its Coulomb phase 2 (31/19) project in 2,300m in Mississippi Canyon 657.
Two wells will be drilled - one this year and one in 2016 - which wll be tied into an existing subsea infrastructrure and then back to the Na Kika semi-submersible production unit, 36km to the northwest. The project is expected to produce 20,000boe/d at peak.
The plan calls for a new manifold, trees, jumpers and umbilical links. Shell has held this lease outright since the previous price-collapse year of 1986, when it paid the then considerable sum of $1.3mn for it.
Shell executives have also said that they want to back to the Arctic this year. In comments made in its Q4 earnings call that struck many as wildly inconsistent with the low-oil-price, cost-cutting environment companies now find themselves in, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden and CFO Simon Henry said they want to spend $1bn exploring in the area that handed Shell a disastrous setback in 2013.
The management pair said, however, that there are lot of ‘ifs’ and they still need to get the permits and not run into any more legal roadblocks to proceed. And, of course, they said whether they go beyond exploration depends on what they find. Both said a 500mmbbl find won’t be sufficient for development to be economic. A discovery must be in ‘the billions’.
Recommended Reading
AI Poised to Break Out of its Oilfield Niche
2024-04-11 - At the AI in Oil & Gas Conference in Houston, experts talked up the benefits artificial intelligence can provide to the downstream, midstream and upstream sectors, while assuring the audience humans will still run the show.
Betting on the Future: Chevron Technology Ventures’ Investment Strategy
2024-04-09 - After a quarter century, Chevron Technology Ventures seeks both incremental and breakthrough technologies with its early-stage investment program.
Defeating the ‘Four Horsemen’ of Flow Assurance
2024-04-18 - Service companies combine processes and techniques to mitigate the impact of paraffin, asphaltenes, hydrates and scale on production—and keep the cash flowing.
AI Advancing Underwater, Reducing Human Risk
2024-03-25 - Experts at CERAWeek by S&P Global detail the changes AI has made in the subsea robotics space while reducing the amount of human effort and safety hazards offshore.
Lift-off: How AI is Boosting Field and Employee Productivity
2024-04-12 - From data extraction to well optimization, the oil and gas industry embraces AI.