Thunder Horse

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Thunder Horse in the Gulf of Mexico on July 12, 2005, listing heavily after the passage of Hurricane Dennis

MV Blue Marlin carrying Thunder Horse

Thunder Horse is an oil platform, a moored semi-submersible, the largest in the world, located in 1,920 metres (6,300 ft) of water in the Mississippi Canyon Block 778/822, Thunder Horse oilfield, about 150 miles (241 km) southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

Construction costs were around one billion USD.^[1] The facility is expected to operate for 25 years, producing about one billion barrels of oil. At its peak, it is expected to process 200,000 million cubic feet of natural gas and 250,000 barrels of oil per day.^[2] The Thunder Horse platform is owned by BP (75%) and ExxonMobil (25%) and operated by BP.

Largely constructed by DSME in South Korea, Thunder Horse was delivered in 2004 to Corpus Christi, Texas aboard MV Blue Marlin for completion.^[3]

In July 2005, Thunder Horse was evacuated in the face of Hurricane Dennis. After the hurricane passed, the platform was listing badly. The cause is still unknown — inspection teams found no hull damage — yet the event boosted world oil prices because of speculation of further oil shortages. The platform was fully righted about a week after Hurricane Dennis, but BP announced that it would not begin commercial production until 2006.^[4] The platform was struck almost directly by Hurricane Katrina six weeks later, but was not heavily damaged.