Simone Sebastian
Houston Chronicle

Shell said Thursday that it is producing oil from a well 9,627 feet below the surface of the Gulf, a depth more than six times greater than the Empire State Building’s height. It exceeds by 271 feet the depth of the previous record-holder, also a Shell project in the Gulf.

Both wells operate through the Perdido drilling and production platform, 200 miles southwest of Houston. The new record-holder is in the Tobago Field, which Shell jointly owns with Chevron and Nexen, according to the company. The previous record-holding well was in the Silvertip field.

The Perdido platform is moored in 8,000 feet of water, which the company says makes it the world’s deepest-water drilling and production platform.

The company did not say how much the new well is producing, but said the daily capacity of the platform is 100,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas.

The Tobago Field well is several miles away from the platform, and the oil flow must follow an incline along the sea floor before being pumped vertically to the platform, Shell spokesman Jaryl Strong said.

Low pressure

Besides the water’s depth, the project posed a challenge because of the reservoir’s low pressure, which necessitated special technology to push the oil nearly two miles up to the platform on the water’s surface.

Shell noted that it did not have the technological ability to produce oil at such depths in 1996 when it purchased the lease where Perdido operates.

Engineers developed a system of electrical pumps embedded in the seabed that help ship the oil to the surface platform, Strong said.

”The industry is moving into these depths,” he said. ”As the industry expands the frontier, it is going to have to come up with solutions like this.”

Equipment in the pro-ject included FMC Technologies’ enhanced vertical deep-water tree system and the five electrical pumps that help push the oil to surface, that Houston-based company said.

Shell is majority owner of the Perdido platform. BP and Chevron also have investment shares.

Perdido serves wells up to seven miles away, Shell said. The company began development drilling in 2007 and oil and gas was first produced in 2010.

Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of petroleum geoscience programs at the University of Houston, said the achievement has global implications.

”They’ve brought that water depth into the realm of being technologically and economically viable,” Van Nieuwenhuise said.

He noted, however, that the industry is pushing into depths that challenge existing emergency well control systems. Well control equipment developed in the wake of last year’s disastrous Gulf oil spill are designed for use in up to 10,000 feet of water.

Limits to safety?

”They are getting real close to the limit of what we can do safely,” Van Nieuwenhuise said.

Strong said Shell has addressed the risks of producing oil in deep-water conditions.

”There are a number of safety innovations built into the Perdido platform to accommodate the environment it is in, in terms of the great depths and long distance from shore,” he said. ”Safety was the No. 1 priority.”

Today’s Guest Blogger is John Amos, Sky Truth

Sky Truth promotes environmental awareness and protection using satellite remote sensing and digital mapping technology. They have been on the job in the Gulf of Mexico for the duration of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster and have been an invaluable source of information throughout for those working to study the ongoing crisis in the Gulf as it unfolds.

November 15, 2011

We’ve been tracking the oil spill reported off Brazil a few days ago, in the Frade field operated by Chevron in the Campos Basin, Brazil’s most productive area of offshore production, and a place where many deepwater technology milestones have been made for offshore oil production. Chevron claimed the oil slick was being caused by a natural oil seep on the seafloor, but they suspended drilling on a well in the field. Brazilian authorities quickly disputed that a natural seep was the cause. And yesterday Chevron admitted the possibility that something went wrong at their drillsite. According to today’s news release from Brazilian authorities, Chevron is trying to kill the well – indicating a loss of well control and blowout. 18 response vessels are on the scene, and Chevron reports the well is leaking about 8,400 – 13,860 gallons (200 -330 barrels) per day.

Based on Brazilian government data showing the locations of active drill rigs, provided to us by some of our very helpful followers on Twitter, we conclude that Chevron’s well was being drilled by the SEDCO 706 semisubmersible drill rig operated by – wait for it – Transocean. Yes, the same company that operated the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig for BP.

MODIS/Aqua satellite image shows growing oil slick in the deepwater Campos Basin off Brazil. Image taken around midday on November 12, 2011.

The MODIS/Aqua satellite image from NASA, above, was taken three days ago. It shows an apparent oil slick originating from the drilling location and extending over 2,379 square kilometers (the south end of the slick gets entrained in an interesting clockwise eddy in the ocean currents). At 1 micron thickness, that’s a volume of 628,000 gallons (14,954 barrels) of oil.

Assuming the spill began midday on November 8 (24 hours before we first observe it on satellite imagery), we estimate a spill rate of at least 157,000 gallons (3,738 barrels) per day. That’s more than 10 times larger than Chevron’s estimate of 330 barrels per day.

Today’s Gulf of Mexico Report is from Guest Blogger,
Attorney Stuart Smith, Smith Stagg LLC, New Orleans, LA

The mystery continues to unfold at the site of last year’s massive oil spill. Flyover surveillance footage taken Nov. 12 reveals no fewer than nine large oil-related work vessels in the waters surrounding BP’s Macondo Prospect. Vast expanses of surface oil have been reported at the site since we broke the story here on this blog in mid-August, but both BP and the U.S. Coast Guard have been unable – or unwilling – to identify the source (see link to my breaking post below).

Credit: On Wings of Care

Here’s how On Wings of Care pilot Bonny Schumaker recounts the scene on the water in her Nov. 12 flyover report:

We saw lots of “work” vessels out in the Macondo today! And new orange buoys we hadn’t seen before. Our southeast-bound route took us past the platform “VK989″ at about N28°58′ W088°37′, and the first two orange buoys we saw were a little over 50 miles off shore to the east-southeast. Thence came a progression of oil-related (BP-contracted, we think) work vessels, some ROV-capable and more. These included the Meg L. Skandi, C. Chariot, Monica Ann, Normand Pacific, Sarah Bordelon, Deep Blue, HOS Iron Horse, Brooks McCall, and Holiday.

That’s a lot of vessels in a tight area of the Gulf of Mexico. We’re talking about a big operation – and an expensive one. For example, the Normand Pacific, flying under the flag of the United Kingdom, is equipped for diving and ROV operations (see file photo below). The vessel is well over a football field long.

MarineTraffic.com

According to the website Marine Traffic, the Holiday, flying under the American flag, departed out of Port Fourchon and arrived at a destination listed as “MC 252″ (the abbreviation for the location of the Macondo Prospect) on Nov. 5 at 9:00 a.m. (see file photo below).

MarineTraffic.com

My guess is the cost per day of operating a fleet of nine vessels like this has to be in the seven-figure range. You have to wonder what kind of alarming subsea scenario would demand that kind of expenditure.

Here is a map of Schumaker’s flight path. You can see the Deepwater Horizon site, marked by the black square labeled DWH. The other black squares signify the vessels in the area (see link to Bonny Schumaker’s On Wings of Care website below for full report, photos and video).

Credit to On Wings of Care

Schumaker’s first Gulf flyover since Sept. 25 not only confirmed the presence of a small fleet of vessels but also that oil continues to foul the area. At times over the last few months, slicks above the Macondo Prospect have extended for miles. More from Schumaker’s Nov. 12 report:

Only when we reached the Holiday was the visibility good enough for us to identify unequivocally a line of oil “globules,” and they were very near the Holiday. That vessel was almost stationary but there was quite a bit of exhaust coming out of a stack on it, as if it were running a pump or something. We saw several other such lines of sheen that did not resemble the usual wind-surface patches or lines, but we did not have time to fly over to them to inspect them closely.

So what does all this activity mean at a site where large oil slicks have been observed for months and a BP-Macondo fingerprint has been established? Based on Schumaker’s aerial observations, it would seem the vessels are out there for at least two reasons: (1) To identify the source of the surface oil through ROV footage; and (2) To recover leaking oil before it reaches the surface (and the prying eyes of the public).

I should note that the line of “oil globules” observed by Schumaker is in the vicinity of a known natural oil seep. But the current level of activity – punctuated by the presence of nine vessels – surrounding the Macondo Prosepect cannot be explained away by a natural seep, particularly one that has been known about for years.

More from Schumaker’s report:

There seems to be a great deal of work going on out there – well, a large number of work vessels out there, but we couldn’t see any work being done from above the water’s surface! Several vessels had cables going down, so they may have been working with ROVs or other equipment sub-surface. We did see the above-mentioned line of oil. Note that all of these vessels are in the same areas that we have documented signifcant quantities of surface oil since August and in particular on our flights dated Aug 30, Sep 10, Sep 11, and Sep 27. We saw no whales or whale sharks or dolphins or other large marine life for this entire flight. There was one other fixed-wing (multi-engine high-wing propeller) airplane that passed us at our altitude (about 800′) on our return, just north of the Holiday and the line of oil; we could not read its registration numbers.

As you can see from Schumaker’s footage (see link below), the Macondo Prospect has become a beehive of activity with a swarm of oil and vessels. Though both BP and the Coast Guard have been running from this escalating “situation” for months, it’s impossible to hide the severity of a problem that requires the presence of nine large, oil-related “work” vessels in a relatively tight area surrounding the Macondo wellsite.

In the absence of even a modicum of transparency or anything resembling leadership on the part of our federal government, Ms. Schumaker’s flights over the Gulf represent the public’s only regular access to the site of last year’s 200-million-gallon spill. We salute her relentless effort to uncover what’s really happening in the waters 60 miles off the Louisiana coast. And she continues her invaluable work in the face of an ongoing, aggressive campaign of obfuscation and misinformation executed by BP and our very own Coast Guard.

Bonny Schumaker is a hero of the Gulf Coast. She deserves a medal for her tireless pursuit of the truth. Please visit her site to see the amazing work her organization is doing – and to donate to the cause.

We will continue to bring you updates on this story as details emerge.

Read my post that broke the “new Macondo leak” story: The Stuart Smith Blog

Visit the On Wings of Care to see all activity (and the nine vessels) near the Macondo Prospect – and please donate to the cause: On Wings of Care