Water injection project to boost Thunder Horse production

BP has started up a major water injection project at its Thunder Horse platform, extending the production life of what is one of the biggest deepwater fields in the US Gulf of Mexico.

Over the past three years, BP has refurbished the platform’s existing topsides and subsea equipment while also drilling two water-injection wells at the site. From those wells, water will be injected into the reservoir to increase pressure and enhance production. The improvements are expected to allow the Thunder Horse facility to recover an additional 65mn boe over time.

The project is the second of five major upstream projects BP expects to bring online in 2016 as part of plans to add approximately 800,000 boe/d of new production globally from projects starting up between 2015 and 2020.

The Thunder Horse platform, which sits in more than 6,000 feet of water and began production in June 2008, has the capacity to handle 250,000 b/d of oil and 200mn cf/d of natural gas. The facility continued to operate while work on the water injection project was underway.

BP operates four large production platforms in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, – Thunder Horse, Atlantis, Mad Dog and Na Kika. It also holds interests in four non-operated hubs – Mars, Mars B, Ursa and Great White.

The company has two other major projects underway in the region. The Thunder Horse South Expansion project will add a new subsea drill centre roughly two miles from the Thunder Horse platform. In addition, BP continues to design the Mad Dog Phase 2 project, which will develop resources in the central area of the Mad Dog field through a subsea development tied back to a new floating production hub consisting of up to 24 wells from four drill centres.

Source: BP