Chevron made the official announcement today that oil and natural gas production has begun at their massive Jack/St. Malo floating production semi-submersible. The rig is located in the Walker Ridge area of the Gulf of Mexico approximately 280 miles (450 km) south of New Orleans, Louisiana in about 7,000 feet of water and is the largest of its kind in the region.
The fields were co-developed with subsea completions flowing back to the Jack/St. Malo floating production unit (FPU) located between the fields which has a production capacity of 170,000 barrels of oil and 42 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, with the potential for future expansion, says Chevron.
Crude oil from the facility will be pipelined approximately 140 miles to the Green Canyon 19 Platform via the Jack/St. Malo Oil Export Pipeline, and then on to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The pipeline is the first large-diameter, ultra-deepwater pipeline in the Walker Ridge area of the Lower Tertiary trend.
The following infographic puts some perspective on the scale of this project:
“Jack/St. Malo is the result of the collaboration of hundreds of suppliers and contractors and many thousands of people across nine countries over a ten-year period,” said Jeff Shellebarger, president, Chevron North America Exploration and Production Company.
The Jack and St. Malo fields, located in the Lower Tertiary formation, are among the largest in the Gulf of Mexico and were discovered in 2004 and 2003, respectively. Production from the first development stage is expected to ramp up over the next several years to a total daily rate of 94,000 barrels of crude oil and 21 million cubic feet of natural gas. With a planned production life of more than 30 years, current technologies are anticipated to recover in excess of 500 million oil-equivalent barrels.
Chevron notes that successive development phases which would employ enhanced oil recovery techniques may enable substantially more oil to be recovered from the field over the next 30 years.
New technology implemented at Jack/St. Malo include the industry’s largest seafloor boosting system and Chevron’s first application of deepwater ocean bottom node seismic technology in the Gulf of Mexico, providing images of subsurface layers nearly 30,000 feet below the ocean floor.
The FPU was built at Samsung Heavy Industries and delivered from the shipyard via the Dockwise Vanguard in early 2013. Crowley tugs helped tow her into position earlier this year. See photos HERE of the tow.
Chevron U.S.A. Inc., has a working interest of 50 percent in the Jack field, with co-owners Statoil (25%) and Maersk Oil (25%). Chevron, through its subsidiaries, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and Union Oil Company of California, also holds a 51 percent working interest in the St. Malo field, with
co-owners Petrobras (25%), Statoil (21.5%), ExxonMobil (1.25%) and Eni (1.25%); and a 40.6 percent ownership interest in the host facility, with co-owners Statoil (27.9%), Petrobras (15%), Maersk Oil (5%), ExxonMobil (10.75%) and Eni (0.75%).
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September 27, 2024
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