SS: Thunder Horse and Atlantis Deepwater Frontier Developments in the Gulf of Mexico" Paper Title - Starting-up Two World Class Facilities in World Class Fashion
Authors: Al Monthiry Wissam , Newcomb S. Ryan , Lowe Jon , DeJohn Kenneth 
Published: July 2010

Start-up and superior operational performance of the Atlantis and Thunder Horse deepwater developments represent historic achievements for BP's Exploration & Production business. This success is manifested in the plant operational reliability demonstrated and expanded upon within the scope of this paper. The Atlantis and Thunder Horse teams attribute this accomplishment to the factors within the following broad categories: Major Project Integration, Operational Readiness and Start-up and Overcoming Adversity. As of end 2009, Atlantis delivered an operational reliability of over 98% and Thunder Horse delivered about 96%. Perhaps the greatest benefit is that all the concepts outlined in this work can be applied to future developments throughout the oil and gas industry.

Introduction

The successful development and production start-up of each of the Atlantis and Thunder Horse projects represent historic achievements for BP's Exploration & Production business. The two ultradeepwater semi-submersible facilities stand as groundbreaking megaproject deliverables in the industry given the size, scale and technological frontiers surpassed in their successful handover to operation. Even more impressive, though, has been their performance since that handover and the first oil dates (October 6, 2007 and June 14, 2008, respectively), ramping-up to today's production rates where they are safely and reliably delivering over 350 MBOE cumulatively to market every day.

Plant operational reliability is the specific measure of success which the Atlantis and Thunder Horse organizations utilize when considering the efforts in the lead-up to first oil. Industry definitions of operational reliability can vary. Both Atlantis and Thunder Horse utilize the definition offered by the BP Production Efficiency Improvement (PEI) Common Process to continuously review plant performance. PEI is a common BP operations framework; one of its outputs is a quantification of Plant Operational Reliability. This reliability value is calculated using the following formula:Equation

* IPC: Installed Production Capacity; Total production capacity that the combination of available wells, subsea, topsides and export systems are able to deliver to sales at any point in time.

Atlantis and Thunder Horse have achieved greater than 95% reliability (using the above definition) since each delivered first oil. This fact has been a product of a number of notable endeavors which commenced from project inception and onwards through to execution and operation. These range from the areas of major project integration, preservation, operational readiness planning, start-up execution and systematic day-to-day operations from " Day One.?? The success was also a product of the way in which Atlantis and Thunder Horse responded to adversity and technology challenges posed by these frontier developments, creating valuable industry experiences through the lead-up to first oil, start-up, ramp-up and normal operations to date.