BP Produces First Oil from Gulf of America Platform Ahead of Schedule

Thursday, December 11, 2025

BP has delivered first oil from the Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion project in the U.S. Gulf of America, two months ahead of plan.

The project is expected to add 15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) gross peak annualized average production at the existing Atlantis platform.

Atlantis, one of BP’s longest-running platforms in the Gulf of America, has a gross production capacity of up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day.  

The Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion adds two wells to an existing drill center, a subsea hub connecting multiple wells. The subsea tieback, which connects new wells to existing offshore production facilities through pipelines, extends the footprint of the Atlantis field discovered in 1998.

BP delivered the Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion project two months ahead of its original schedule by utilizing existing subsea inventory, drilling and completing wells more efficiently, and streamlining offshore execution planning.

Thie achievement marks BP’s fifth major startup that has been delivered ahead of schedule this year.

BP is Atlantis’ operator with 56% working interest. The co-owner is Woodside Energy, with 44% share.

The Atlantis platform is BP’s deepest moored floating platform in the Gulf of America. It operates in 7,074 feet of water, about 150 miles south of New Orleans.

"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 US production to around 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030.

“This latest success demonstrates the dedication of our US 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," said Gordon Birrell, bp’s executive vice president of production and operations.

The Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion is the second in a series of new projects BP is planning in the U.S. Gulf of America between now and the end of the decade that are expected to enable bp to boost its capacity to produce more than 400,000 boe/d from the US offshore region by 2030.

In August 2025, BP started up the Argos Southwest Extension project, a three-well subsea tieback that is adding 20,000 boe/d barrels a day of gross peak annualized average oil production to its Argos platform. In 2027, the company plans to deliver Atlantis Major Facility Expansion, which will further increase production from the Atlantis field using existing infrastructure.

In addition to the Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion project, BP started up major projects this year in Trinidad and Tobago, the U.K. North Sea, Egypt, Mauritania and Senegal, as well as  Argos Southwest Expansion in the Gulf of America – contributing to its plan to deliver 10 major project startups globally by 2027.

Categories: Industry News Activity Production North America Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Gulf of America

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