Chevron Corporation has started water injection operations at two projects to boost oil and natural gas recovery at the company’s existing Jack/St. Malo and Tahiti facilities in the deepwater U.S. Gulf of Mexico, where Chevron operations produce some of the lowest carbon intensity oil and gas.
At the Jack/St. Malo facility, Chevron achieved the first water injection at the St. Malo field, the company’s first waterflood project in the deepwater Wilcox trend. The project was delivered under budget, with the addition of water injection facilities, two new production wells, and two new injection wells. It is expected to add approximately 175 million barrels of oil equivalent to the St. Malo field’s gross ultimate recovery.
The St. Malo field and Jack/St. Malo facility are approximately 280 miles (450 km) south of New Orleans, Louisiana, in approximately 7,000 feet (2,134 m) of water. Since the fields started production in 2014, Jack and St. Malo together have cumulatively produced almost 400 million gross barrels of oil equivalent.
At the Tahiti facility, located approximately 190 miles (306 km) south of New Orleans in around 4,100 feet (1,250 m) of water, Chevron started injecting water into its first deepwater Gulf producer-to-injector conversion wells. The project included the installation of a new water injection manifold and 20,000 feet of flexible water injection flowline.
Bolstered by multiple development projects since the start of operations in 2009, the Tahiti facility recently surpassed 500 million gross barrels of oil-equivalent cumulative production. The company continues to study advanced drilling, completion, and production technologies that could be employed in future development phases at Tahiti and Jack/St. Malo with the potential to further increase recovery from these fields.