BP has started oil production at its Argos offshore platform, the company’s fifth platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the first new BP-operated production facility in the region since 2008. The platform is located about 190 miles south of New Orleans in 4,500-foot-deep water. BP is the operator, with 60.5% working interest. Co-owners include Woodside Energy (23.9%) and Union Oil Company of California, an affiliate of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. (15.6%).
With a gross production capacity of up to 140,000 barrels of oil per day, the semi-submersible platform ultimately will increase BP’s gross operated production capacity in the Gulf by an estimated 20%. BP expects to ramp up production through 2023.
Argos is the centrepiece of BP’s Mad Dog Phase 2 project, which extends the life of the super-giant oil field discovered in 1998. It is one of nine high-margin major projects globally that the company plans to start up by the end of 2025.
Argos is BP’s most digitally advanced platform operating in the Gulf of Mexico, featuring the company’s proprietary LoSal Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and Dynamic Digital Twin technologies. Argos has a waterflood injection capacity of more than 140,000 barrels of low-salinity water per day to help increase oil recovery from the Mad Dog field. Dynamic Digital Twin, a BP patent-pending software that links data from Argos to 3D digital models, allows remote operators wearing virtual reality headsets to access data in real time to improve decision-making, efficiency and safety.
