American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014 - 70

SpecialReport: Offshore & Subsea Technology
ditional opportunities to tie back. Right away, we will be tying
back to the Hadrian South development and will be able to capture resources that might have been stranded without the Lucius
infrastructure. It also opens the smaller accumulations that may
be found and can be tied to the Lucius spar over the next 20 years."
Christiansen says Lucius' hub-and-spoke configuration will
be similar to the Anadarko-operated Constitution/Ticonderoga spar
in Green Canyon.
"When room became available there, a couple other discoveries in the area tied into the Constitution spar," he observes. "We
actually expanded capacity there to be able to handle the additional resources, but we still were able to shave off almost $1 billion in capital costs because we did not have to build and install
an entirely new spar in the same area. We were able to utilize that
hub-and-spoke to enhance the economics of those fields. That is
the type of thing you can do with spars when you get infrastructure in frontier areas, which we are doing with Lucius."
Lamey says differences in pressures needed to discharge hydrocarbons will continue to be a limiting factor on distances to
the remote production that can be accommodated by Lucius and
similar production facilities.
"Depending on how much resource you have out this far, you
usually have 500 to 1,000 pounds more discharge pressure when
delivering the oil and gas back, which is more even than for deepwater facilities such as Constitution," he says. "Equipment gets
bigger, heavier and more costly. Basically, your metrics get more
difficult the farther you get from infrastructure. Lucius is roughly 250 miles off the Gulf Coast; that is a fairly significant distance."
Generally, tied-back production is limited to about 25 miles,
although dry gas production has been tied back from as far away
as 70 miles, Hart mentions.
"It becomes a real challenge, if you have smaller develop-

The Lucius spar was launched less than five years after the initial discovery and less than three years after project sanctioning. Among the companies involved in the project, Anadarko
reports, Technip constructed the hull; the main topsides were
built by Kiewit; major modules, including the living quarters,
were built by Beacon; and the Booster compressor modules
were built at Dolphin. FMC Technologies is providing subsea
trees and valves, and Heerema Marine Contractors transported
and installed the topsides and equipment modules atop the hull.

70 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

ments-maybe natural gas and such that typically don't have as
high a resource base," Lamey comments. "Those resources will
stay stranded unless they can tie to something such as this. It's
a pretty nice prospective area around Lucius, so we anticipate other business, and we still have holdings out there that we are going to explore also."
Heidelberg
In the meantime, Anadarko says it is continuing with plans for
first oil in 2016 at its Heidelberg complex in Green Canyon, which
was discovered in February 2009. Drilling at Heidelberg was expected to begin during the second quarter, according to a company update.
Anadarko has a 31.5 percent working interest in Heidelberg,
on which fabrication of the hull spar was 85 percent complete in
the first quarter and topsides fabrication was more than 25 percent complete, the company's operations report states. Anadarko
anticipates towing the spar to the Gulf of Mexico later this year.
Lamey says building the two truss spars much alike further
shortens the time to execution for Heidelberg. "You can shorten that preparation time down to, say half a year, instead of a year,"
he estimates.
Hart says Heidelberg, Lucius and similar projects will continue to be integral to Anadarko's strategy to exploit high-margin oil plays. That includes, of course, the Lower Tertiary Shenandoah Basin, which Anadarko operates with a 30 percent working interest, he notes.
With a rig mobilizing in May, Hart says a second Shenandoah
appraisal well is expected to test the downdip and lateral limits
of the field relative to the Shenandoah No. 2 and the more than
1,000 feet of net oil pay it encountered. The Shenandoah Basin
is one of the company's largest Gulf of Mexico oil discoveries,
he adds.
A company report notes that within the Shenandoah basin,
Anadarko holds a 25 percent interest in Yucatan and 35 percent
in nearby Coronado. Drilling continued on the second appraisal well at Coronado in early spring to test a separate Mioceneaged subsalt accumulation found in the discovery well. Anadarko
will become operator after the well is drilled.
Spudded in early January, the first appraisal well at Yucatan
was drilling one mile northeast and 1,000 feet structurally downdip
from the Yucatan 1 discovery well, the report continues. Planned
total depth is 33,000 feet.
Altogether, Hart says, the massive oil finds will bolster
Anadarko's resource base and Gulf production significantly. Average sales volumes exceeded 98,000 boe/d in the first quarter,
with 53 percent being liquids.
Projects such as Lucius and Heidelberg continue to demonstrate the importance of the Gulf of Mexico as a core operating
area for Anadarko, Christiansen says.
"They are large fields with high-margin oil," he assesses. "Then,
you follow with Shenandoah, which may be the largest discovery we have made in the Gulf. We are still trying to delineate exactly how big that may be. We have interests in the Shenandoah,
Coronado and Yucatan prospects, which are all together in the same
minibasin, so you have a really good story that indicates just how
much potential growth opportunity there is left in the Gulf of Mexico. Every time people write it off, it surprises you with what you
find next. Shenandoah is a great example of that."

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014

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