BP decides on name for new Gulf of Mexico platform

UK oil major BP has said that the new floating production unit for the Mad Dog 2 project in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico will be named Argos.

The name, chosen by the project team and an employee survey, is a reference to Odysseus’ loyal dog from “The Odyssey,” and a nod to the Mad Dog spar, an existing production facility operated by BP that is located about six nautical miles away from the Argos site, BP said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Mad Dog 2 project includes the Argos platform with the capacity to produce up to 140,000 gross barrels of crude oil per day through a subsea production system from up to 14 production wells and eight water injection wells.

“Selecting Argos as the name of our newest platform is an important milestone for the Mad Dog 2 project, which remains on track and on budget,” said Starlee Sykes, BP’s regional president for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada.

“This project is key to delivering high-margin production from one of the largest fields in the Gulf of Mexico, and it will strengthen our position in the basin for years to come.”

BP’s fifth operated platform in GoM

The platform will be the first new BP-operated production facility in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008 when Thunder Horse came online. It will be BP’s fifth operated platform in the Gulf of Mexico and it will help extend the life of the super-giant Mad Dog oil field beyond 2050.

Originally estimated to cost over $20 billion, BP worked with co-owners and contractors to simplify and standardize the platform’s design, reducing the overall project cost by about 60 percent.

The final investment decision for the $9 billion project was approved by BP (60.5 percent) in late 2016 and in early 2017 by co-owners BHP (23.9 percent) and Union Oil Company of California, an affiliate of Chevron (15.6 percent).

The hull and topsides of the Argos platform are currently under construction in South Korea, with oil production from the facility expected to begin in late 2021.

BP last year also awarded contracts for the Mad Dog 2 to Wood, Schlumberger, and Subsea 7.

BP discovered the Mad Dog field in 1998 and began production there with its first platform in 2005. Continued appraisal drilling in the field during 2009 and 2011 doubled the resource estimate of the Mad Dog field to more than 4 billion barrels of oil equivalent, spurring the need for another platform at the field.

The second Mad Dog platform will be moored approximately six miles to the southwest of the existing Mad Dog platform, which is located in 4,500 feet of water about 190 miles south of New Orleans. The current Mad Dog platform has the capacity to produce up to 80,000 gross barrels of oil and 60 million gross cubic feet of natural gas per day.

The new floating production unit for #BP‘s Mad Dog 2 project in the deepwater #GulfofMexico will be named Argos: https://t.co/M60sOHnVjF pic.twitter.com/O57RjQOEgA

— BP America (@BP_America) November 27, 2018