BP announced on Thursday that it has begun production from the Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion in the U.S. Gulf, marking the company’s seventh major upstream project startup of 2025 and its fifth this year to come online ahead of schedule.
The two-well subsea tieback to the existing Atlantis platform delivered first oil two months ahead of schedule, according to the supermajor, which stated that the project is expected to add approximately 15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) in gross peak annualized average production. The Atlantis platform, one of BP’s longest-running facilities in the region, has a gross production capacity of up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day.
The expansion adds two wells to an existing subsea drill center and extends the footprint of the Atlantis field, discovered in 1998. BP said the accelerated delivery was achieved by using existing subsea inventory, improving drilling and completion efficiency, and streamlining offshore execution.
"Atlantis Drill Center 1 caps off an excellent year of seven major project start-ups for BP. This project supports our plans to safely grow our upstream business, which includes increasing U.S. production to around 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030," said Gordon Birrell, bp’s executive vice president of production and operations.
“This latest success demonstrates the dedication of our U.S. project team and our teams around the world, who are delivering new barrels at pace and with lower production costs, in service of growing long-term value for shareholders," Birrell added.
BP operates Atlantis with a 56% working interest; Woodside Energy owns the remaining 44%. The field has been producing for nearly 20 years and is home to BP’s deepest moored floating platform in the U.S. Gulf, located about 150 miles south of New Orleans in 7,074' of water.
The Drill Center 1 expansion is the second in a slate of new projects BP expects to deliver in the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by the Trump administration as the Gulf of America, by 2030 as it builds toward more than 400,000 boe/d of regional offshore capacity, the company said.
Earlier this year, BP started up major projects in Trinidad and Tobago (two), the U.K. North Sea, Egypt, Mauritania and Senegal, along with the Argos Southwest Extension in the U.S. Gulf, which began production in August and is adding 20,000 boe/d.
“This expansion at Atlantis is further testament to the benefits of maximizing production from our existing platforms in the Gulf of America, growing bp’s U.S. offshore energy production safely and efficiently,” said Andy Krieger, bp’s senior vice president for the Gulf of America and Canada. “We are committed to investing in America as we firmly believe this region will continue to play a critical role in delivering secure and reliable energy to the world today and tomorrow.”
