NEW ORLEANS — Oil and natural gas are now flowing via a floating platform tethered in nearly a mile of water off New Orleans, Chevron Corp. officials said.
The company said the tension-leg drilling and production platform is in the deepest water of any such facility.
The well is in the Big Foot field about 225 miles south of New Orleans.
Chevron estimates it can get the equivalent of more than 8.4 billion gallons of oil from the field over 35 years. The platform is designed to extract up to 3.1 million gallons of oil and 25 million cubic feet 25 of natural gas a day.
Chevron owns 60 percent of the operation and Norwegian and Japanese energy companies own the rest.
