February 27, 2005
By LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press
Houston Chronicle

INGLESIDE -- It's named like a superhero, and in an era of expanding consumption of dwindling fossil fuels, the world's largest floating oil and gas production platform has aspirations to match.
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Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton was among about a dozen VIPs donning hard hats and steel toe boots Saturday for a tour of Thunder Horse, a $5 billion colossus of steel rigging set to head out to drill in deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform will leave shore in a few weeks.

Owners BP PLC and ExxonMobil say Thunder Horse will pump enough petroleum each day to fuel 90 SUVs driving a million miles and drill enough natural gas to provide a day's power for 6.5 million homes.

Norton said that's vitally important to the Bush administration's goal of relying less on foreign oil.

"Many people have an image of offshore drilling that is frozen in time," she said. "Thunder Horse is a dramatic embodiment of how far technology has progressed. It shows the power of technology to conquer extremes of nature in pursuit of energy."

Thunder Horse is the size of four football fields and is larger than four aircraft carriers. Its cranes, gangplanks, and derricks soar 425 above the water. The drills are operated from a control room that Norton said reminded her of the starship Enterprise from "Star Trek."

Once drilled, the wells will be monitored from another room full of computers. In another of its many feats, Thunder Horse will run on the gas it taps.

Tethered by steel cables fastened to 16 deep pilings, Thunder Horse will float a mile above a 54 square-mile oil field of the same name. Like other newly discovered oil fields, it was given a code name by the geologists who found it to keep it secret during bidding.

Seismic explorers, who use sound waves to map densities in the earth's crust, discovered the Thunder Horse reserve in 1999 about 150 miles off the Texas and Louisiana coasts. It is estimated to contain enough petroleum to produce 1 billion barrels of oil, the largest discovery in the Gulf to date.

While geologists once doubted oil could be found that far offshore, the U.S. Minerals Management Service now hopes the heyday of Gulf Coast exploration has just begun.

The agency estimates there's enough oil under the Gulf for 55 more Thunder Horse-sized fields. BP has several more platforms in development or in operation in other deep water areas of the Gulf.

"These are amazing times in the Gulf," MMS director Johnnie Burton said. "We are entering the second decade of sustained expansion of domestic oil and gas production in the deep water and ultra deep water areas of the Gulf."

And Chris Wilhite, the Sierra Club's associate regional representative, said he'd rather see drilling rigs offshore than along the nation's pristine beaches.

By peak production, scheduled for 2011, Thunder Horse will process 250,000 barrels of oil a day.

Designing the Thunder Horse was one accomplishment, and building it was another.

There were only two docks capable of building it -- one in Indonesia and the other in Okpo, South Korea, where workers spent two years building it.

Transporting the platform was another challenge. No vessel large enough to tow the 60,000 ton structure existed, so BP had to spend $30 million expanding Dockwise Shipping's Blue Marlin, the largest ship it could find.

Thunder Horse rode above the submersible Blue Marlin on a 61-day journey across the Indian Ocean, around the bottom of Africa, and across the Atlantic.

It was built to ride out any storm, said Mike Baur, Thunder Horse's facility manager.

"You can't just pull something like that into port," he said.

When the platform leaves shore, some 350 workers ranging from electricians to drill workers to kitchen staff will be aboard.

Wendell Guidry, the catering manager, showed off the low-fat soft-serve ice cream machine and fully equipped kitchen. He said the first night's dinner would be roasted pork tenderloin with mushroom peppercorn sauce.

But the menu will be flexible.

"Some times, guys just want Spam," he said.

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On the Net:

BP PLC, http://www.bp.com/

ExxonMobil, http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/

U.S. Minerals Management Service, http://www.mms.gov/

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3059410