The bounty of oil coming from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico is getting bigger now that Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE: NBL) has started production at its deepwater Gunflint oil development.

Located in Mississippi Canyon Block 948, production from the field is expected to reach 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, Noble Energy said July 21. About 75% of the volumes produced from the two-well field will be oil.

“Our drilling and completions teams delivered impressive technical accomplishments on the Gunflint development, including several innovative first time techniques for the industry,” Hodge Walker, vice president of Noble’s Gulf of Mexico and West Africa operations, said in a prepared statement. “The coordination of simultaneous operations, including topside modifications at the floating production system and subsea well activities, is an accomplishment for all involved.”

Gunflint, a subsea tieback to the Gulfstar One facility owned by Williams Partners L.P. and Marubeni Corp., marks the fourth major offshore project Noble has completed within the past nine months. It follows the U.S. Gulf of Mexico startups of Big Bend and Dantzler in addition to the Marathon Oil Corp.-operated Alba B3 compression platform in Equatorial Guinea’s Alba Field, in which Noble holds a 35% working interest.

The subsalt Miocene development is also another sign of how operators are relying on subsea tiebacks to both reduce costs and startup times—both of which Noble said it accomplished.

Freeport McMoRan’s Holstein Deep in the Green Canyon area is also expected to start production in mid-2016. Like Gunflint, the field is being developed initially as subsea tieback. Plans are for three wells to initially produce at an estimated 24 Mboe/d in aggregate, Freeport-McMoran said in an earnings report news release.

“Two additional projects are projected to begin producing in 2017, and both are expected to be developed as subsea tiebacks,”according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). These are LLOG Exploration’s Son of Bluto 2 and Freeport McMoRan’s Horn Mountain Deep.

Gunflint’s two wells are tied via jumpers to 8-in. pipelines that carry oil about 21 km to Gulfstar. The subsea services division of EMAS was contracted to install the pipelines, umbilicals and ancillary equipment for the project in water depths of more than 2,000 m in April 2014.

The net amount to Noble at Gunflint, where the company holds a 31.14% interest, is expected to be at least 5,000 boe/d; however, the volumes could be higher depending on available capacity at the host facility, Noble said. Other stakeholders include Ecopetrol America Inc. with 31.50%; Samson Offshore Mapleleaf, 19.13%; and Marathon Oil Corp., 18.23%.

The EIA estimated in February that crude oil production in the U.S. GoM could rise to a record high in 2017 despite low commodity prices. The region’s average production was forecast to rise from 1.63 million barrels per day in 2016 to 1.91 MMbbl/d by December 2017—making up 21% of the total crude oil production forecast for the entire U.S.

Velda Addison can be reached at vaddison@hartenergy.com.

Offshore