Deep-Water Drilling Is Back
Pipes and mooring lines rise from the Gulf of Mexico beneath Chevron Corp.’s Jack/St. Malo deep-water oil platform about 200 miles off the coast of Louisiana on May 18, 2018.
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
On a hot, sunny May afternoon, flying fish leap out of the Gulf of Mexico’s brilliant blue waters near the steel legs of a Chevron Corp. oil platform, pursued by deep-water predators. “Is that a shark chasing them?” asks barge supervisor Jamie Gobert, peering over a rail. “Think it’s yellowfin tuna or maybe dolphinfish,” says Emile Boudreaux, his colleague.
Typically in the region, seeing so many deep-water creatures converging on a single spot would be unusual. But these denizens of the Gulf have a road map of sorts to Chevron’s huge Jack/St. Malo platform, a floating steel structure the size of three football fields about 200 miles off the Louisiana coast. The fish are following giant underwater pipelines that carry crude from three oil fields about 15 miles away in different directions from the Jack/St. Malo, like tentacles of an octopus. Unlike old-style platforms that suck oil from a field directly below, this weblike arrangement lets the Jack/St. Malo pump more than 3,000 gallons of crude a minute from the trio of fields.