The BP-operated semisubmersible platform starts production and is expected to handle up to 140,000 barrels of oil per day.

Last week BP announced that oil production started at the Argos offshore platform. BP discovered the Mad Dog oil field in 1998 and commenced production in 2005. The company doubled its initial resource estimate in 2011 due to additional appraisal wells, generating the need for a second production platform. As a result, the Mad Dog Phase II expansion project began proposing the construction of an additional production platform capable of handling fourteen additional production wells and eight water injectors. The project is a southern and southwestern extension of the existing BP-operated platform in blocks GC825 and GC826. A Final Investment Decision (FID) was approved in 2017, and the construction of Argos started in South Korea in 2018. Argos is the fifth platform BP operates in the Gulf, and it is expected to handle up to 140,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd), increasing BP’s production capacity by nearly 20%. BP is the operator of the platform with a 60.5% working interest. Co-owners include Woodside Energy with 23.9% and Chevron U.S.A. with the remaining 15.6%.

According to TGS Well Data Analytics, there are ten active oil wells and one inactive well in Mad Dog Phase I. All wells are producing from the Cenozoic Mississippi fan bold belt play located at approximately 21,000 ft TVD and water depths of close to 4,500 ft. The dataset also indicates that the most productive oil wells in the most recent year are located towards the western portion of the area, as can be seen in the bubble map displayed below, with rates ranging from 8,750 to 11,852 barrels of oil per day (bopd). Moreover, the map also shows in magenta the wells completed after January 2020 that will be feeding the new platform.

Argos fits like a glove in BP’s strategic plan to increase total GoM production to ~400 kbopd by 2025. As Bernard Looney, BP CEO, outlined: “The start-up of Argos is a fantastic achievement that helps deliver our integrated energy strategy – investing in today’s energy system and, at the same time, investing in the energy transition."

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Figure:

Mad Dog Field Close-up. Phase I - Current Producing Wells. Bubble Size Represents Accumulated Oil Volume in the Last Year of Production. Phase II – Wells Completed after Jan 2020 and Feeding Argos Production Platform.