Blind Faith, Sea of Joy

Friday, November 14, 2008


The photo on the left was taken about a year ago during an API-sponsored blogger and reporter tour of Blind Faith, Chevron’s deep sea oil and gas platform being constructed at Corpus Christi.

The billion dollar project is now producing. From Chevron’s news release:

SAN RAMON, Calif., Nov. 12, 2008 - Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) today announced that it has started crude oil production from its Blind Faith Field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. First oil from Blind Faith was achieved on Nov. 11, 2008. Daily production is expected to ramp up to approximately 65,000 barrels of crude oil and 55 million cubic feet of natural gas over the next three months.

Blind Faith utilizes a deep-draft semisubmersible hull located about 160 miles (250 kilometers) southeast of New Orleans, La., on Mississippi Canyon block 650. Chevron’s deepest offshore production facility, Blind Faith is located in 6,500 feet (1,981 meters) of water, and with subsea systems located in 7,000 feet (2,134 meters) of water in Mississippi Canyon blocks 695 and 696.

“Blind Faith is one of several major near-term upstream projects that will allow us to grow our reserves and production,” said George Kirkland, executive vice president, Global Upstream and Gas, Chevron. “It is another demonstration of how Chevron is leading the industry in the selection and execution of major capital projects.”

Along with the incredible investment involved in such projects, we’d note the time involved.  The Blind Faith discovery well was drilled in June 2001, and of course, that followed years of seismic and geologic investigation. (And by the way, Blind Faith made it through Hurricane Gustav with minimal damage.)

Good thing oil companies make money.

 

 


Posted @ 9:44 am | Category: Energy | Author: Carter Wood | Tags: , , | No Comments

The Case for Offshore Drilling

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Larry Kudlow interviewed James Hackett, president & CEO of Anadarko Petroleum, on energy issues last night. As to the benefits of drilling offshore, Hackett explained:

[We’ve] got a world class project that is the deepest producing well in the history of the world. It’s providing clean, natural gas to America, about 1.5 percent of all of our gas supply. Everyday it’s being provided from a football field and a half sized environmental footprint, a two-hour flight away from the shoreline. So it’s not in any visual contact with any human being. These platforms have gone through 200-year hurricanes, back in 2005, without any environmental consequences. It’s a bit of a fiction hoisted on us by people who don’t know better.

And to the assertion that new energy supplies from offshore or Alaska won’t have any immediate effect on prices, Hackett remarks:

Well I think that the price would adjust actually as soon as you started drilling it. There’s a psychology with regard to speculative elements in any commodity market, whether it’s grains, or metals, or oil and gas. If the world really felt that there were plenty of places to go look for oil and gas, the markets would start trading as if that were a reality. Today it’s quite the opposite reality, especially with the geopolitical elements overlaying that. So, every time we say to the world, ‘We want energy security, but we want you to produce it, and we’re not going to do anything,’ the elements in the trading community say, ‘well that means that access is getting tougher.’

The inset photo is of the Blind Faith platform, a Chevron-Anadarko project which will begin producing oil and natural gas in the Gulf this year. USA Today took a look at the promise and challenges of deep-sea production last week in a good story, “Deepwater oil fields are a final frontier,” which notes, “By 2015, Chevron expects deepwater wells to account for one-quarter of offshore oil production vs. 9% today.”

Anadarko summarized its capital projects for the year in a February news release. Wow. Good thing oil companies make money.


Posted @ 3:26 pm | Category: Energy | Author: Carter Wood | Tags: , , , | No Comments

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