Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday that it had started oil production at its Appomattox floating production system months ahead of schedule, opening a new frontier in the deepwater U.S. Gulf of Mexico and starting first production ever from a Jurassic reservoir in the region. Appomattox—operated by Shell with 79 percent with a unit of China’s CNOOC holding 21 percent—is currently expected to produce 175,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d). Appomattox is the first commercial discovery brought into production in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico Norphlet formation. The Appomattox development and production will be closely followed by industry analysts because it could give indications about other potential reservoirs in the Norphlet formation. In May last year, Shell said that it had made a large deepwater exploration discovery in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, just 13 miles from Appomattox. The Dover discovery was Shell’s sixth in the Norphlet […]