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Anadarko conquers Genghis Khan Gulf of Mexico deepwater discovery produces 110 feet of ‘high-quality’ oil pay; satellite field to be tied back to Marco Polo production facility in 2006 Ray Tyson Petroleum News Houston Correspondent
Anadarko Petroleum has come up with a third satellite discovery in Green Canyon that should bring badly needed oil to the company’s underachieving Marco Polo production facility in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.
The Genghis Khan exploratory well on Green Canyon Block 652 encountered 110 feet of “high quality” net oil pay in the lower Miocene formation and apparent additional pay up hole in the middle Miocene section, Anadarko disclosed April 27.
Although the big Houston-based independent said it would immediately drill an appraisal well to better measure Genghis Khan’s size, the discovery apparently is large enough to pursue commercial development. First production via a sub-sea tieback to the Marco Polo platform is expected in 2006, the company said.
“Having the Marco Polo facility available to produce the Genghis Khan discovery greatly enhances the project’s returns, both by accelerating the development plan and leveraging off existing assets,” said Robert Daniels, Anadarko’s senior vice president of exploration and production. Earlier discoveries to produce this year Production from two earlier satellite discoveries, K2 and K2 North, is scheduled to begin flowing into the Marco Polo facilities in mid-2005, Anadarko said. The floating production facility is on Green Canyon Block 608.
Marco Polo needs all the help it can get. The anchor field that currently supports the facility has never performed up to Anadarko’s 50,000-barrel a day expectation.
The Marco Polo field, Anadarko’s first deepwater discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, was found in April 2000 and came on stream in July 2004. The field quickly peaked at around 42,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and was down to about 24,000 barrels per day by year-end, with the company expecting further production declines.
Anadarko said last October that pressures from Marco Polo wells were not holding up as expected. The company suspected the field was more “compartmentalized” than seismic imaging and pressure tests had initially indicated and said it might have to either reduce Marco Polo’s booked reserves, or drill more wells to enhance reservoir performance. Facility can handle 120,000 bpd Marco Polo’s floating production facility, which is owned by GulfTerra and CalDive and operated by Anadarko, was built to handle 120,000 barrels of oil a day and 300 million cubic feet of gas a day. So there should be plenty of room for K2 North and K2, as well as Genghis Khan.
However, Anadarko spokeswoman Margaret Cooper said the company was “not ready to make volume projections” for Genghis Khan, K2 and K2 North.
Nevertheless, company officials last October said that K2 and K2 North together could bring an additional 25,000 to 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day into the Marco Polo facilities. The company said then it was not expecting pressure problems at K2 and K2 North, in part because they were situated farther down on the structure and were not as geologically faulted as the Marco Polo field.
The Genghis Khan discovery, 2.4 miles from the Marco Polo facilities at a water depth of 4,300 feet, was drilled to a total depth of about 26,000 feet in about half the time originally forecast, Anadarko said. The company holds a 100 percent working interest in the block that houses Genghis Khan, along with a 100 percent working interest in Marco Polo and K2 North and a 52.5 percent interest in K2.
Anadarko said it plans to drill six more exploration wells in the Gulf of Mexico this year. The company owns an average 73 percent interest in 230 blocks in the Gulf.
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