As onshore oil yields decline and near-shore fields are tapped out, oil development is pushing into ever-deeper waters. The engineering challenges of deepwater production demand innovative thinking and vastly increase the risks of opening new fields.
The oil industry saw development of the deepwater Lower Tertiary trend 200 miles south of Freeport, Texas, containing an estimated 3 billion to 15 billion barrels of oil as a daunting enterprise. But G.T. Ju, a subsea engineer with Shell, is overseeing finishing touches on the Perdido development, a multibillion-dollar engineering, construction and installation project that will produce and deliver oil and gas from 34 wells. It will eventually produce 130,000 barrels of oil per day, and is expected to be the first to commercially exploit the basin. It is being developed by Netherlands-based Royal Dutch Shell plc, Richmond, Calif.-based Chevron U.S.A. and U.K.-based BP plc.