New BP offshore rig arrives
Argos platform will employ hundreds as it begins work in the Gulf to extract oil
After a two-month, 16,000mile trip, BP’s new Argos offshore platform arrived Monday near Corpus Christi, bringing hundreds of jobs to the beleaguered Gulf Coast offshore industry.
The floating semi-submersible, as tall as a 27-story building and with a deck the size of a football field, is one of BP’s largest oil production platforms. It is the centerpiece of the British oil major’s $9 billion project to extract oil from the Mad Dog 2 field in 4,500 feet of water almost 200 miles south of New Orleans. The platform is BP’s fifth in the Gulf and first addition since 2008, before the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil leak in 2010.
“(Argos) will bring forward a very high quality and efficient development, many years in the making, and we’re excited about it,” said Starlee Sykes, senior vice president of BP’s Gulf of Mexico and Canada operations.
Argos arrived at Kiewit Offshore Services fabrication yard in Ingleside as the offshore industry is coming out of the worst oil bust in decades and as BP moves from fossil fuels to prepare for a low-carbon future. Offshore companies during the pandemic have shed hundreds of jobs and scrapped relatively new drilling rigs. Like most platforms, Argos is designed to operate for the next 20 to 30 years.
It will support 800 workers at Ingleside and 250 jobs in the Gulf.
BP executives say Argos is a major step in a significant project that will extract low-cost, low-emission crude that will help fund BP’s growing renewable energy business and meet its 2050 net-zero emissions goal.
“The timing is good,” Sykes said. “We have a long horizon on it; we’re not driven by short cycle pricing issues. We’re excited to get out there and start producing next year. It’ll be at the right time for the company and for the world.”
BP said its existing Gulf of Mexico fields can break even with crude prices as low as $30 a barrel, making it some of the lowest-cost oil in the world to produce. Offshore oil platforms also usually burn off less natural gas than onshore shale production, although oil spills remain a risk.
The platform will be able to produce up to 140,000 barrels of oil and gas per day, boosting BP’s output in the Gulf by about a quarter.
“For us, it’s not about volume. It’s more around the best barrels that the world needs as we progress to the energy transition,” Sykes said. “And it’s really those barrels that will help fund and fuel that transition.”
Argos was built over three years by Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea. It features digital technology to allow onshore maintenance crews to diagnose platform issues remotely. BP learned from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill in 2010, Sykes said, and incorporated its safety findings into the new platform’s development.