Chevron Waterflooding Fields in the Gulf of Mexico

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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Hundreds of millions of additional barrels of oil equivalent could come from the Gulf of Mexico due to the start of enhanced recovery methods, U.S.-based supermajor Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) (San Ramon, California) said.

Chevron said Wednesday that it started water injection, or waterflooding, at its Jack/St. Malo and Tahiti facilities in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Waterflooding is a method of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that uses injected water to physically sweep oil and associated gas toward the production well, stimulating flows.

"Delivery of these two projects maximizes returns from our existing resource base and contributes toward growing our production to 300,000 net barrels of oil equivalent per day [BOE/d] in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico by 2026," said Bruce Neimeyer, the president of upstream operations for Chevron.

Chevron reported its total U.S.-based production during the second quarter was up 353,000 BOE/d above year-ago levels, though the company attributed much of that to growth in the inland Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico.

Net global production was up 11% compared to year-ago levels.

EOR at St. Malo came in under budget for two new production and two new injection wells. Chevron believes waterflooding will add another 175 million BOE to the field's capacity.

Production started in 2014. Both the Jack and St. Malo fields have combined for nearly 400 million BOE since then.

Tahiti already passed 500 million BOE, after starting production in 2009.

EOR, meanwhile, is nothing new. Steam is deployed to lower the viscosity of the thicker type of crude oil found in Canada, while Shell Offshore Inc. recently made a final investment decision (FID) to waterflood its Vito prospect in the Gulf of Mexico.

First oil at Vito was achieved in February 2023 at an asset that Shell believes holds 29 million BOE reserves.

Shell believes waterflooding will more than double the reserve potential at Vito to about 60 million BOE. Vito started production last year at about 100,000 BOE/d. The waterflooding process is expected to begin in 2027.

Neimeyer at Chevron added that EOR in the Gulf of Mexico follows first oil at its long-awaited Anchor prospect offshore, which deployed a different type of novel extraction technology.

Chevron used extreme subsea pressures to achieve first oil at its $5.7 billion Anchor project, utilizing new technology capable of handling up to 20,000 pounds-per-square-inch (psi).

The Anchor semi-submersible floating production unit (FPU) has a processing design capacity of 75,000 barrels per day of oil and 28 million cubic feet per day of natural gas.

Including Jack/St. Malo, and Tahiti, Anchor represents Chevron's sixth operated facility currently in production in the U.S. territorial waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

On average, the Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 15% of total oil output and 1% of the total natural gas production.

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