Posted on 10/21/2010 10:27:13 AM PDT by thackney
Chevron Corp. has approved a $7.5 billion project to develop two deep-water fields in the outer rim of the Gulf of Mexico, marking one of the oil and gas industry's biggest investments ever in the U.S. offshore area and a big vote for the future of the region after the BP oil spill.
The decision on the Jack and St. Malo fields, which comes seven years after the first discovery there, sets in motion a sweeping effort to design and build a massive floating city about 280 miles southwest of New Orleans that is expected to produce its first barrels of crude oil in 2014.
It also represents a major step forward in a highly touted frontier region of the Gulf, which has been hailed as the biggest domestic discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay a generation ago.
But as Chevron's project illustrates, there is nothing easy about operating in the remote area. Not only are the fields beneath 7,000 feet of water and as much as four additional miles below the sea floor, they are in ancient rock layers that are still not well understood by industry.
"This one, by and large, is going to be our biggest and most complex undertaking in our history in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico," said Gary Luquette, the company's chief of North American exploration and production, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle in advance of today's official announcement.
To make the project feasible, Chevron and its partners are building a giant facility that will function as a single hub for the fields located 25 miles apart -
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
tie in production from three clusters of pumps and other equipment on the seafloor
If Obama and the green commies don’t kill it....
Nice. I added CVX to my portfolio last week. The company seems to be making good moves.
It’s capital expenditures like these that will end this recession. That is, capex that works, i.e. not windmill dream farms.
Plentiful energy, produced by the US; was, is and will be the key to prosperity.
“design and build a massive floating city”
I see no details on this. Building a massive floating oil and gas platform offers an opportunity for a REAL floating city — complete with resort hotels, marinas, water sports, sport fishing, beaches, snorkeling reefs, etc. A floating island paradise for tourists and rig workers’ families rather than just a glorified oil platform.
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