delivering first oil while lowering development costs

For Isral Wright, working in the Gulf of America (GOA) has proved how success can be transferred from one project to the next.

Fresh from helping bring the industry-first Anchor Project online, Wright played an important role in helping Ballymore, Chevron’s latest deepwater project, achieve first oil.

“Both projects are growing Chevron’s production in the region,” said Wright, a Ballymore subsea hardware and installation engineer. “Getting them online is a big step forward.”

Ballymore, which achieved first oil on April 20, is a deepwater oil field tieback. That means it is connected—or tied back—via a subsea flowline to Chevron’s existing Blind Faith facility approximately three miles away. This approach helps Chevron do more with less.

A subsea tieback connects offshore oil and gas fields, using pipelines and other infrastructure, to existing facilities—in this case, the Blind Faith Platform—allowing Chevron to develop an oil and gas field without having to build a dedicated platform.

Developing a new field as a subsea tieback helps lower the cost of development and enables production to be brought online sooner.

Ballymore Field coming online—with Chevron’s Pascagoula Refinery ready to take first oil—marks a significant milestone. It ensures sustained Gulf Coast production and strengthens the domestic supply in the Gulf Coast refining network for years to come.

Ballymore is expected to produce up to 75,000 gross barrels of oil per day. Chevron is the primary operator with a 60% interest.

The Ballymore and Anchor projects aren’t the only areas of growth in Chevron’s Gulf portfolio. Production from the Whale Project, in which Chevron has a nonoperating interest, started in mid-2024. The company also began water injection to boost output at its Tahiti and Jack/St. Malo facilities.

Chevron is continuing to build its deepwater portfolio through exploration and development of resources near existing assets.

The company aims to reach 300,000 net barrels of oil-equivalent per day in the Gulf by 2026.

Blind Faith has been operating safely since 2008 and will continue to produce in the years ahead.

Ballymore benefited greatly from leveraging standardized equipment designs and repeatable engineering solutions and technology. In addition, the team was able to apply lessons learned from the Anchor Project to help bring Ballymore online, said Wright.

He said it’s been satisfying to see both projects, after years of effort, come to fruition.

“It’s nice to see,” he said, adding of Anchor: “It’s kind of cool to know I was a part of something that has never been done before.”