Lucius and Hadrian South Projects: Development Overview

Abstract This paper provides an overview of the development of Anadarko's Lucius oil field and ExxonMobil's Hadrian South natural gas field tie back to the Lucius facility. These projects were successfully completed in 1Q 2015 in the southeast corner of the Keathley Canyon area of the deep water Gulf of Mexico. The Lucius project team responded to the opportunity created by the Hadrian South resource and other challenges resulting from the use of new build vessels, a strained labor market, and new regulations affecting the Gulf of Mexico since 2011. The ability of the project to execute in roughly three years from sanction and only five years from discovery can be credited in large part to the operator's development strategy of utilizing a core group of proven, trusted suppliers. To mitigate site terrain challenges, simplify riser design, and minimize cost/schedule risk, the operator chose a truss spar as the hull for this wet tree only development. It is the operator's largest spar to date. The Hadrian South project is ExxonMobil's deepest sub-sea tie-back. It was contracted on a competitively bid basis and executed in parallel with the Lucius development. Close cooperation with the Lucius project team, disciplined management of change, and rigorous opportunity and vulnerability tracking resulted in a capital efficient project with a number of scope optimizations and minimal EPC changes. The Lucius field is located in Keathley Canyon blocks 874, 875, 918, and 919. It holds an estimated 300-plus million recoverable barrels of oil equivalent. This project was sanctioned in December 2011, and achieved first production in January 2015, with the first production from the nearby South Hadrian field in March 2015. The truss spar's topsides process systems can process more than 80,000 BOPD and 450 MMSCFD. The reserves will be produced through six initial wet-tree wells. The Hadrian South field, located in Keathley Canyon block 964, was discovered in 2009, and was sanctioned in December 2011. Hadrian South was developed as a two wet-tree well 300 MMSCFD tieback to the Lucius spar located eight miles to the north/northwest.