John Hollowell News

Shell has begun production from the Mars B development through Olympus, the company’s seventh and largest floating deepwater platform in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the first deepwater project in the Gulf to expand an existing oil and gas field with significant new infrastructure, which should extend the life of the greater Mars basin to 2050 or beyond. Combined future production from Olympus and the original Mars platform is expected to deliver an estimated resource base of 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

Shell and its partners have begun production from the second development phase of the Parque das Conchas (BC-10) project, located off Brazil’s south-east coast. The BC-10 project (Shell share 50%, Petrobras 35%, ONGC 15%) is comprised of several subsea fields which are tied back to a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, named the Espírito Santo. In 2009 the first phase of the project began production, when the Abalone and Ostra fields were connected, along with the Argonauta B-West reservoir.

Shell, and its partners, are expecting to boost production with two new deepwater projects at Parque das Conchas (BC-10) and the Bijupirá/Salema fields. "Offshore Brazil is a key part of our plans to grow our deepwater portfolio – a key component of our global strategy,” said John Hollowell, Executive Vice President for Deep Water, Shell Upstream Americas. For Parque das Conchas (BC-10), Shell and its partners Petrobras and ONGC, have decided to move forward with Phase 3 of the project, which will include the installation of subsea-infrastructure at the Massa and Argonauta O-South fields. These fields will be tied-back to the Espírito Santo – the floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) – that is at the center of the Parque das Conchas development.

Nearly two decades after setting a world water-depth record for drilling and production, Shell’s Auger tension-leg platform is still playing a central and innovative role in the company’s deep water Gulf of Mexico portfolio – currently producing some 55,000 barrels oil equivalent (boe) per day (Shell share ~30,000 boe per day), and acting in the future as the host platform for the Cardamom subsea development. The Cardamom discovery well also set records three years ago, for subsurface length and depth. With the latest seismic and drilling technologies, the Cardamom development is expected to deliver new production from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico to existing infrastructure.