Chevron announces the first oil production at Ballymore Project in US Gulf

Chevron announced on Monday that it had begun oil and gas production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. This brings the company closer to its goal of increasing production by 50% from the ocean basin this year. Ballymore is a $1.6 billion project located 160 miles south of New Orleans. It consists of three wells and is expected to yield up to 75,000 barrels equivalents per day (boepd). Chevron wants to increase oil and gas production in the Gulf region to 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) by 2026. At the same time, the company is cutting costs up to $3 billion across its business. The company will not build a new platform to produce oil and gas for Ballymore. Instead, it will use the wells to transport the oil and natural gas to an existing platform. This will enable them to increase production with less cost.

Bruce Niemeyer is the president of Americas Exploration and Production. He said in an interview that "Ballymore" was interesting because it was a tie back to an existing facility. This has allowed us more quickly to get production on the market.

He added that this is Chevron’s first project in the Norphlet geological formation in the Gulf, an area where oil and gas discoveries have been less frequent than in other areas of the ocean basin.

Niemeyer stated that technological advances are crucial to the expansion of resource exploration. For example, the use ocean bottom nodes which allows geophysicists collect better data beneath the ocean floor.

Chevron owns 60% of Ballymore, and TotalEnergies 40%. Ballymore has estimated 150,000,000 barrels of oil-equivalent in recoverable resources. Niemeyer stated that the company has 370 leases on the Gulf of Mexico, and it expects to take part in a sale of leases this year by President Donald Trump's Administration. Ballymore's start-up follows Chevron's announcement of first oil at Anchor in August, a Gulf of Mexico Project that was a technological advance with the capability to operate under deepwater pressures of 20,000 pounds per sq inch. Reporting by Sheila Dang, Houston; editing by Chizu Nomiyama

(source: Reuters)