Chevron orders Big Foot well completion equipment

May 24, 2011
Chevron USA Inc. ordered from Baker Hughes Inc. electrical submersible pumps (ESPs) and production packers for seven producing wells, as well as mudline packers for three injection wells for its Gulf of Mexico deepwater Big Foot development.

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, May 24
-- Chevron USA Inc. ordered from Baker Hughes Inc. electrical submersible pumps (ESPs) and production packers for seven producing wells, as well as mudline packers for three injection wells for its Gulf of Mexico deepwater Big Foot development.

Baker Hughes notes that this will be the first time a company deploys ESPs in Gulf of Mexico deepwater wells. The ESPs will be installed at about a 16,000 ft true vertical depth.

Discovered in 2006, Big Foot is in 5,200 ft of water on Walker Ridge Block 29 and is scheduled to start production in 2014.

Big Foot will produce to an integrated drilling and production extended tension-leg platform with dry trees and capacity to produce 75,000 bo/d and 25 MMscf of gas.

Baker Hughes expects to deploy the ESPs in 2014.

Baker Hughes notes that the 1,200 hp dual ESPs will have the highest horsepower in-well systems ever deployed offshore. The ESPs will be deployed with dual by-pass systems, allowing for reservoir access and the ability to switch between ESPs without intervention.

Chevron estimates that Big Foot contains in excess of 200 million boe of recoverable resources (OGJ, Dec. 27, 2010, Newsletter). Primary pay sands are Middle to Upper Miocene ranging from 19,000 to 24,000 ft and lie below a salt canopy ranging from 8,000 to 15,000 ft thick.

Chevron has a 60% working interest in the $4 billion Big Foot project.