According to the industry news on the 24th, global oil giant BP (BP) has invited Samsung Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, three South Korean shipyards and Singaporean offshore giant Seatrium (formerly Seatrium Maritime) to bid on the construction of floating oil and gas production platforms (FPUs) for the development of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico’s Kaskida and Tiber oilfields. The final investment decision (FID) for the Gulf of Mexico field development project is expected to be finalized in the third quarter of next year.
FPUs are devices that store, process and transport oil and gas produced from drilling platforms.FPUs are categorized as fixed or floating, whereas floating types are less affected by water depth and can be deployed farther out to sea.
Up to now, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has taken over an FPU from Australia’s Woodside Energy in July this year, valued at about $1.193 billion, which is expected to be delivered in the first half of 2027, when it will be deployed in the Trion oil field 180 kilometers east of the Gulf of Mexico. The FPU has an overall length of 94 meters, a width of 94 meters and a height of 57 meters, with a total payload of over 44,000 tons and a capacity to produce 100,000 barrels of crude oil and 4.1 million cbm of natural gas per day.
In August this year, Seatrium’s wholly owned subsidiary Seatrium Oil and Gas International Pte. Ltd. signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with Shell Marine for the construction of an FPU for Shell’s Sparta project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
It is understood that the Kaskida oil field, discovered by BP in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006, is located in Block 292 of the Keithley Canyon District. The field has a water depth of 1,500 meters and a proven recovery capacity of about 4 billion barrels of oil, with production scheduled to begin in 2028.
Located about 250 miles southeast of Houston, Texas, the Tiber field was discovered in 2009 after 9.4 kilometers of drilling, making it the deepest field in the history of drilling. The reserves are said to be between 4 and 6 billion barrels of oil, including natural gas, enough to meet the U.S.’s crude oil needs for a year. The field will soon enter the conceptual design phase of oil drilling.
BP plans to produce 300,000 barrels of oil per day from the Kaskida and Tiber fields by 2030.