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Someday, however, it will become apparent that the real disaster is taking place 150 miles to the south at BP's multi-billion dollar Thunder Horse oil platform that was supposed to extract a billion barrels of oil at a rate of 250,000 barrels a day (b/d). Production at Thunder Horse began in May of 2008 and by the end of the year had reached 170,000 b/d. Then something unexpected happened; instead of production increasing to the rated 250,000 b/d, production began to drop at 2-3 percent each month so by the end of 2009 production was down to 60 or 70,000 b/d. As BP is under no obligation to tell us what is going on, little news other than mandatory federal production reports have been released.
While new oil discoveries are trumpeted widely, failing projects, especially multi-billion dollar ones, just seem to fade away. Another Gulf project know as Neptune is not doing too well either. Neptune was expected to produce 50,000 b/d. The platform peaked at 40,000 b/d in August 2008. Sixteen months later production was down to 16,000 b/d. It now looks as if the platform that was supposed to produce 150 million barrels of crude will produce on the order of 33 million. The pattern emerging here is that deepwater oil production is not only dangerous, it may not be all it is cracked up to be.
The international oil companies that are drilling in deep water certainly are not about to connect the dots for us, but independent observers say it is looking like our new deepwater oil wells are only going to be producing some 10 or 20 percent of initial estimates. Deep water oil is a whole different game with which no one has much experience. None of the deepwater fields have been producing long enough to have established any track record as to just how much oil can ultimately be recovered from deep beneath the sea where temperatures and pressures are extreme.
Now all this might be of academic interest until we recall that, outside of Iraq, there are few places left to drill on dry land with much potential. The few good dry land and shallow water sites left are firmly in the hands of national oil companies, whose first job is to ensure that their domestic oil market is fully supplied with cheap oil for their citizens. If there is any left over, they will be happy to sell it to foreigners.
http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/natio...lf-crisis.html
While new oil discoveries are trumpeted widely, failing projects, especially multi-billion dollar ones, just seem to fade away. Another Gulf project know as Neptune is not doing too well either. Neptune was expected to produce 50,000 b/d. The platform peaked at 40,000 b/d in August 2008. Sixteen months later production was down to 16,000 b/d. It now looks as if the platform that was supposed to produce 150 million barrels of crude will produce on the order of 33 million. The pattern emerging here is that deepwater oil production is not only dangerous, it may not be all it is cracked up to be.
The international oil companies that are drilling in deep water certainly are not about to connect the dots for us, but independent observers say it is looking like our new deepwater oil wells are only going to be producing some 10 or 20 percent of initial estimates. Deep water oil is a whole different game with which no one has much experience. None of the deepwater fields have been producing long enough to have established any track record as to just how much oil can ultimately be recovered from deep beneath the sea where temperatures and pressures are extreme.
Now all this might be of academic interest until we recall that, outside of Iraq, there are few places left to drill on dry land with much potential. The few good dry land and shallow water sites left are firmly in the hands of national oil companies, whose first job is to ensure that their domestic oil market is fully supplied with cheap oil for their citizens. If there is any left over, they will be happy to sell it to foreigners.
http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/natio...lf-crisis.html
: how many oil shale wells you need to have to replace one well of Thunder Horse where some of them were producing up to 50000 bopd. You can calculate the economic for youself what is a payout for these wells. I would call TH as a best field in entire US GOM as today.
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