HOUSTON — BP announced today that the new floating production unit for the Mad Dog 2 project in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico will be named Argos.
The name, chosen by the project team and an employee survey, is a reference to Odysseus’ loyal dog from “The Odyssey,†and a nod to the Mad Dog spar, an existing production facility operated by BP that is located about six nautical miles away from the Argos site.
The Mad Dog 2 project includes the Argos platform with the capacity to produce up to 140,000 gross barrels of crude oil per day through a subsea production system from up to 14 production wells and eight water injection wells.
“Selecting Argos as the name of our newest platform is an important milestone for the Mad Dog 2 project, which remains on track and on budget,†said Starlee Sykes, BP’s regional president for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada. “This project is key to delivering high-margin production from one of the largest fields in the Gulf of Mexico, and it will strengthen our position in the basin for years to come.â€
The platform will be the first new BP-operated production facility in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008, when Thunder Horse came online. It will be BP’s fifth operated platform in the Gulf of Mexico and it will help extend the life of the super-giant Mad Dog oil field beyond 2050.
Originally estimated to cost over $20 billion, BP worked with co-owners and contractors to simplify and standardize the platform’s design, reducing the overall project cost by about 60 percent. The final investment decision for the $9 billion project was approved in early 2017 by BP (60.5 percent) and co-owners BHP (23.9 percent) and Union Oil Company of California, an affiliate of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. (15.6 percent).
The hull and topsides of the Argos platform are currently under construction in South Korea, with oil production from the facility expected to begin in late 2021. Â
About BP:
BP is a global producer of oil and gas with operations in over 70 countries. BP has a larger economic footprint in the U.S. than in any other nation, and it has invested more than $100 billion here since 2005. BP employs about 14,000 people across the U.S. and supports more than 111,000 additional jobs through all its business activities. For more information on BP in America, visit www.bp.com/us.
Notes to Editors:
- BP discovered the Mad Dog field in 1998 and began production there with its first platform in 2005. Continued appraisal drilling in the field has more than doubled the resource estimate of the Mad Dog field to more than 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, requiring the need for another platform at the super-giant field.
- The existing Mad Dog platform, is located in 4,500 feet of water about 190 miles south of New Orleans. It has the capacity to produce up to 100,000 gross barrels of oil and 60 million gross cubic feet of natural gas per day.
BP Press Office, uspress@bp.com
Photo: BP
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