Offshore staff
WASHINGTON, DC – In its June 2022 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that nine new fields will come online in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico this year, and that these fields will account for 5% of natural gas production and 14% of crude oil production in US federal Gulf of Mexico waters by the end of 2023.
According to the EIA, fields coming online this year include those at Argos/Mad Dog 2, Vito, Lobster, Dome Patrol, Olympus, Taggart, and the Kings Quay fields. The agency noted that the large development fields at Argos/Mad Dog 2, King’s Quay, and Vito each has a peak production capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day or more.
But, the agency also commented that it expects that the additional capacity from these new fields will not quite sustain crude oil production at levels similar to the end of 2021. Declining production from existing GoM fields will largely offset the increases in crude oil production from these new fields, while natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico will continue its three-year decline, according to EIA projections.
During 2021, 15% of all US crude oil production was produced in the Gulf, and 2% of US natural gas production was produced there.
The EIA said that it expects that GoM natural gas production will average 2.1 Bcf/d in 2023, down 0.1 Bcf/d from 2022. It also projects that GoM crude oil production will average 1.8 MMb/d in 2023, about the same as in 2022. Currently, no GoM fields are scheduled to start up in 2023, the report said.
06.23.2022
