From Houston (BN): More details have emerged about LLOG’s plans to drill a well into MC 252, the block where BP’s ill-fated Macondo (SEN, 32/5) was located. LLOG now owns most of the block, excluding aliquots where BP’s actual well and sunken equipment lie.

LLOG plans to drill from a surface location in MC 253 into MC 252 reservoirs dubbed M56 Lower A and M56 Lower B, with expected completion perforations between 5,960m and 5,999m in depth.

Macondo was shallower, drilled to 5,577m before it blew out, killed 11 workers, sank the drilling rig and spewed, by court calculation, more than 3mmbbl of crude before capping after 87 days.

The estimate of a worst-case blowout from LLOG’s new well – an estimate required by regulators – is 109 days and 2.23mmbbl.

LLOG’s target is API 34.9-degree oil. Plans call for tying back any production that results to LLOG’s Delta House hub platform, 9.2km to the east in MC 254.

Water depth at the surface location in MC 253 is just over 1,500m. The work is targeted for later this year.

Meanwhile, regulators have okayed LLOG’s plan to drill three 100-day exploratory wells in Mississippi Canyon 936, a prospect LLOG dubs D-Day. (LLOG continues its tradition of hyphenated or multiword names that follow no pattern.)

The site is in in 1,225m about 224km south-southeast of New Orleans. The wells target API 28-degree oil and are to be drilled at the rate of one a year starting in mid-2016.

Offshore