The Atlantis platform was the deepest moored floating dual oil and gas production facility in the world at the time of its installation. Its record was broken by the Independence semi-submersible hub, which weighed 58,700t. BP is the operator of the platform with 56% ownership and its venture partner BHP Billiton has a 44% working interest.
The oil and gas platform was originally scheduled to begin operations in 2006. However, hurricanes in 2005 delayed progress and increased prices. Atlantis finally produced its first oil in October 2007, with full commissioning and a ramp-up in production in mid-December.
Initially producing at a daily rate of around 10,000 barrels of oil, Atlantis reached its production peak by the end of 2008. It has a production capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil and 180 million cubic feet of gas a day.
In January 2019, BP announced plans for the $1.3bn Atlantis phase three expansion. The expansion comes after recent breakthroughs in advanced seismic imaging techniques, which led to the discovery of an additional 400 million barrels of oil at the Atlantis field. The project is expected to be commissioned in 2020 and increase production at the platform by 38,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). More details