Type:
Oil & Gas
Design:
Fixed steel jacket
Installed:
2000
Facility:
Production
Water Depth:
98
meters
Country:
USA - New Orleans District
Block:
GRAND ISLE AREA 17. Block 116
Intro
Hickory is a deepwater subsea oil development in the Gulf of Mexico, brought online in 2022. It operates as a satellite tie-back to an existing floating production host, with no surface installation of its own. The development focuses on subsea production routed to regional infrastructure for full processing and export.
Field
The Hickory field is located in Garden Banks, Gulf of Mexico, targeting Miocene-age turbidite sandstone reservoirs. The accumulation is relatively small in scale and developed as a subsea tie-back to maximise recovery of stranded reserves within a mature deepwater basin characterised by channelised sand systems.
Facilities
Hickory is developed using subsea wells equipped with horizontal trees and tied into a subsea manifold. Production is transported via insulated flowlines to a host floating production facility (Auger TLP) for processing. At the host, fluids undergo multi-stage separation into oil, gas, and produced water. Oil is stabilised and exported via the Poseidon Oil Pipeline system, while gas is compressed and exported through offshore gas pipeline networks. Produced water is treated prior to discharge or reinjection. Subsea infrastructure includes electro-hydraulic umbilicals providing well control, chemical injection, and communication. Flow assurance is managed through insulation and continuous chemical dosing to mitigate hydrate formation and wax deposition. The system is remotely operated from the host facility, with no topside processing at the field location, leveraging existing infrastructure to reduce development cost and complexity.
Similar Platforms
Image Source: US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. (All rights belong to the original owner.)
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