User:Kailua1313/sandbox

Bigfoot is an offshore oil and natural gas production facility to be located in the Big Foot Oilfield in Walker Ridge block 29 in the Gulf of Mexico. It is operated by Chevron but is in a partnership with Statoil, and Marubeni Oil & Gas. Its production facilities will have have a daily capacity of 75000 oilbbl/d and 25 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. Big Foot will be positioned 225 miles south of New Orleans, Louisiana in Walker Ridge 29.

Platform
The platform will sit in a water depth of about 5200 feet. The extended tension-leg platform will boast an onboard, full-capacity drilling rig, and production wells with submersible pumps that reach a depth of 16000 feet. Its production facilities have a daily capacity of 75000 oilbbl/d of oil and 25 million cubic feet of natural gas.

Oilfield
Big Foot will be positioned in the in the Big Foot Oilfield in Walker Ridge block 29 in the Gulf of Mexico which was discovered on January 4, 2006 The estimated total of recoverable resources exceeds 200 million barrels of oil and large quantities of natural gas. The Walker Ridge area has very strong loop currents that are occur when trade winds coming from Africa push warm waters through the Gulf of Mexico where they loop east and south before flowing out through the Florida Straits. They are described as “The hurricanes of the underwater,” (Sweeney, 17) with some reaching almost 6 mph. Even the currents where the platform sits while it undergoes construction in the Gulf can be strong enough to “Pluck and pick steel pipes like they’re nylon guitar strings.” (Sweeney, 17)

Incidents
Production was originally supposed to start in November of 2014, however there were problems with the tethering system. Bigfoot is supposed to be tethered to the seafloor by tendons made of mile-long steel tubes. These tendons were being held in place by large buoys until they could be connected to the platform. Chevron USA Inc. filed a suit in state district court against McDermott Inc., a subcontractor. They attested that McDermott Inc. did not follow the design plans, and had used bolts that were not strong enough to attach the tendons to the large buoys that held them in place. This resulted in equipment failure and caused 6 out of the 16 tendons to detach. The tendons snapping did not lead to damage of the platform, an oil spill, or injuries, but it did increase the number of years before production started by around four years.