American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014 - 67

SpecialReport: Offshore & Subsea Technology

Milestone Development

Lucius Discovery
Anadarko announced the Lucius discovery in Keathley
Canyon Block 875 in December 2009. Drilled to 20,000 feet in
7,100 feet of water, it included more than 200 feet of net pay and
high quality crude that together made exploration and development economical, Hart says.
"This is a fairly shallow deepwater discovery," he assesses.
"Even though we are in several thousand feet of water, we drilled
to 20,000 feet. We are drilling wells in 30-45 days. A lot of wells
in deep water are being drilled in 120-150 days. In terms of deep

Living Quarters

Main Deck
Production Deck
Cellar Deck
Subcellar Deck
Chain Jacks

Spar Chain
Hard Tank

Strake
Mooring
Fair Lead

Mooring
Line

SPAR HULL

In addition to the spar's large topsides and massive hull, which
is 110 feet in diameter, 605 feet long, and weighs 23,000 tons,
Lucius represents a milestone for Anadarko by being its first deepwater facility to launch since the drilling moratorium ended, while
taking less than five years since initial discovery and less than
three years since official project sanctioning.
"There aren't many projects that meet that timeline," suggests
Danny Hart, subsurface general manager at Anadarko. "We continued to do what we do best: We found a great new deepwater
discovery, and then we put the project execution in place to get
that facility on line in fewer than five years."
Anadarko estimates it has more than 300 million boe in relatively shallow, highly productive reservoirs in the Lucius
Field's subsalt Pliocene and Miocene sands in a three-way structure against salt. "The reservoirs have exceptional porosity and
permeability," Hart says, pointing out that Lucius is being developed under a unitization agreement and spans a portion of Keathley Canyon Blocks 874, 875, 918, and 919.
Hart says the Lucius truss spar can accommodate more than
80,000 barrels of oil and 450 million cubic feet of gas a day, including gas resources from the nearby Hadrian South Field under a production-handling agreement. Along with Anadarko
(23.829 percent working interest) as operator, partners are
Freeport-McMoRan (19.998 percent), ExxonMobil (20.000
percent), Apache Corp. (10.002 percent), Petrobras (11.500 percent), INPEX Corporation (6.171 percent) and Eni SpA (8.500
percent).
Early on, the partners, including those gained from the unitization agreement, were unanimous in favor of Anadarko operating the spar, Lamey recalls.

"They thought we had the execution skills, staff and expertise to bring this on faster and more reliably," he says. "They all
wanted us to be the operator, which helped us to close things and
get the necessary agreements in place prior to the official sanction."

TOPSIDES

On the heels of Lucius, Christiansen says, Anadarko expects
to bring the Heidelberg Field on line in 2016 using a carbon-copy
floating production facility in 5,300 feet of water in the Green
Canyon area. Heidelberg is estimated to contain 200 million-400
million boe in Miocene sands.
Farther out, Anadarko is eyeing the development of what appears to be a giant find: the Lower Tertiary Shenandoah Basin,
which a company announcement says is "emerging as one of the
largest oil accumulations ever discovered in the Gulf."
With three discovery wells drilled to date (Shenandoah, Yucatan and Coronado), the basin is thought to have game-changing resource potential on the order of 1 billion boe, according to
analysts. Appraisal drilling is ongoing in the Walker Ridge area,
but Anadarko created a buzz last year when it announced that the
Shenandoah No. 2 had logged more than 1,000 feet of net oil pay
in multiple "high-quality" reservoirs.
As part of a "design one, build two" facilities strategy, identical floating truss spars are being used to develop both the Lucius and Heidelberg fields, according to Matt Lamey, Lucius project manager for Anadarko.
He adds that the Lucius truss spar is the largest commissioned
to date by the company, which has been a pioneer in deploying
spars in the Gulf dating back to the first production spar at the
Neptune Field in 1997, and the first truss spars at the Boomvang
and Nansen fields in 2001. Today, Lamey notes, Anadarko operates eight production facilities in the deep- and ultradeepwater Gulf.

Heave
Plate
Truss
Section

Oil & Gas
Export Lines

Keel Tank

The Lucius truss spar is the largest commissioned to date by
Anadarko Petroleum, which installed its first production spar
at the Neptune Field in 1997. Lucius' topsides and hull are 100
feet in diameter, 605 feet long, and weigh 23,000 tons.

JUNE 2014 67

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014

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