BP, a British multinational oil and gas trade company, discovers massive 1 billion barrels of oil at its Thunder Horse oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil trader also announced that it has two oil discoveries and a substantial new investment.
BP is one of the world’s top energy company by market capitalization and holds the title of the biggest producer in the Gulf of Mexico. The company wants to keep that title through investments on new generation technology, exploration success, and productivity.
According to the oil giant on Tuesday, it will allocate $1.3 billion on developing the third stage of its Atlantis oilfield off the coast of New Orleans. After discovering an additional 400 million barrels of oil at the field, BP aims to start its production of 8 new wells which will add 38,000 barrels per day to the company’s total output at the Atlantis field by 2020.
In the previous years, it would take months to years for BP to finish analyzing their data on Thunder Horse, but now it takes them only weeks. The company credits its investment on advanced seismic technology and fast data processing for boosting up its ability to affirm their new discoveries of oil at Thunder Horse and Atlantis.
BP expects its daily fossil fuel output to strike 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) through the middle of the next decade. Currently, the oil giant is producing about 300 boepd, went up from less than 200,000 boepd five years ago.
BP is looking into developing reservoirs at the Manuel prospect, where rival company Shell holds a 50% stake. The oil giant also announced new discoveries at the Nearly Headless Nick prospect near the Na Kika platform located northeast of Thunder Horse, where the company holds a 20.25% working interest.
