U.S. Gulf of Mexico

Increasing Production in the Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is an active place for ExxonMobil engineers, drillers and production personnel as they work to bring on new domestic oil and gas supplies at established off-shore fields to meet ever-growing U.S. energy demand.

Six miles from the company’s Hoover Diana development in the Gulf of Mexico, a new well is expected to more than triple existing natural gas production.  The gas pockets are in a field called Rockefeller, one of several surrounding the Hoover Diana offshore platform, which began production in 2000. View a map of our U.S. Gulf of Mexico operations.

Rockefeller was once considered too expensive to develop, but technology advancements, along with a drilling plan that tied the new well into an existing subsea network offered millions in cost savings and enabled the company to begin development in 2007. 

Drilling operations were completed in July 2009.  The drilling crew of The Ocean Valiant leveraged the company’s Fast Drill Process (FDP) to achieve a nearly 60 percent increase in feet-per-day drilling rates compared to other ExxonMobil-operated deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico.  The project saved more than $10 million by drilling the well on the southeast corner of the Madison field, where ExxonMobil has existing production, and connecting the gathering line from Rockefeller into the Madison subsea template so the gas can be directed to Hoover Diana for processing and transmission to shore for domestic sales.  Production start-up for the field began in September 2009.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, ExxonMobil employees and contractors are working  to bring new energy supplies online, acquire additional exploration acreage and work over existing wells to keep oil and gas flowing.  Some of the company’s newest equipment, construction and most exciting technology applications are occurring in Gulf of Mexico fields ExxonMobil has operated for decades.