Mars Platform News

Crude exports from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) are hitting a record high even as U.S. crude exports have fallen as the coronavirus pandemic has chopped worldwide fuel demand.Oil majors Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc are the main winners from rising LOOP exports, because they pump most of the mid-sour crude exported from the terminal.LOOP largely ships out Mars crude, a medium-sour grade of oil produced from the Mars platform, a joint venture of majority-owner Shell and BP, located about 130 miles (210 km) off the coast of New Orleans.

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’s Perdido Development, the world's deepest offshore oil platform, won the ENR Energy Construction Project of the Year award at the Platts Global Energy Awards Ceremony on December 3, 2009. In addition, Shell was a finalist in three other categories. Members of the Shell project management team as well as chief scientists were at the ceremony to accept the award. Shell designed the Perdido host spar, a floating production facility, which is jointly owned by Shell (35%, operator), Chevron (37.5%), and BP (27.5%).

Crude deliveries to Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), the only deep-water U.S. oil port and a major conduit for the country's crude oil imports, will hold steady at stronger levels in November. LOOP unloads more than 900,000 bpd of imported crude oil from tankers in the Gulf of Mexico and over 300,000 bpd of domestically produced crude oil from the offshore Mars platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Speculation that November LOOP throughputs might fall because refiners would be able to use oil secured in the U.S. government's release of crude from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) did not materialize. The terminal, located 20 miles south of Grand Isle, La., is linked to a 50-million barrel onshore storage facility that supplies refineries in Louisiana, Texas and the Midwest.

It took patience, ingenuity and untold millions of dollars to heal the wounds Hurricane Katrina inflicted on Royal Dutch Shell's Mars platform, the most prolific oil-producing platform in the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly a year and a half after the storm pummeled the 36,500-ton structure with 175-mph winds and 80-foot waves that left dead fish and crumpled steel on its decks, the platform has surpassed its pre-Katrina oil production levels. The biggest step left to restore Mars to its pre-Katrina strength is the return of its drilling rig. Due in April, it will have a new 250-foot derrick atop a repaired 1,000-ton substructure that the storm ripped from its clamps and then slammed back onto the platform. And how.

As Hurricane Katrina slammed through the Gulf of Mexico, energy companies evacuated offshore workers and shut about 91 percent of the region's oil production, or 1.37 million barrels daily, according to a Bloomberg report. Katrina ripped drilling rigs from moorings, damaged production platforms and curtailed pipeline shipments, idling 11 percent of U.S. refining capacity and leaving oil supplies vulnerable to another crisis. In turn, the crisis is prohibiting the companies to assess damage to the 819 staffed production platforms and 137 drilling rigs off Louisiana and Texas. ``This hurricane caused catastrophic devastation,'' the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement on its Web site.