NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Chevron Corp. says it is now getting oil and natural gas from a floating platform tethered in nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) of water off of New Orleans.
The company says the tension-leg drilling and production platform is in the deepest water of any such facility. The well is in the Big Foot field about 225 miles (360 kilometers) south of New Orleans.
Chevron estimates that it can get the equivalent of more than 8.4 billion gallons (31.8 billion liters) of oil from the field over 35 years.
It announced last week that production had begun at the platform, which is designed to extract up to 3.1 million gallons (11.7 million liters) of oil and 25 million cubic feet 25 (708,000 cubic meters) of natural gas a day.
Chevron USA Inc. owns 60 percent of the project, Equinor Gulf of Mexico LLC owns 27.5 percent and Marubeni Oil & Gas (USA) LLC 12.5 percent. Equinor and Marubeni are Houston subsidiaries of foreign companies. Equinor — formerly Statoil SA — is based in Stavanger, Norway. Marubeni Corp. is based in Tokyo.
