BP announces first oil from Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion in US Gulf

BP (BP) said last week that it had achieved first oil from the Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion project in the US Gulf of Mexico. This represents the supermajor’s seventh major upstream project start-up of the year, as well as its fifth project of 2025 to enter service ahead of schedule.

The Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion is a two-well subsea tieback to the operational Atlantis platform. In a December 11 announcement, BP said that the expansion would add gross peak production of around 15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).

BP said it had been able to start up the Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion two months ahead of its original schedule by using existing subsea inventory, drilling and completing wells more efficiently and streamlining offshore execution planning.

"Atlantis Drill Center 1 caps off an excellent year of seven major project start-ups for BP,” stated BP’s executive vice president of production and operations, Gordon Birrell. “This project supports our plans to safely grow our upstream business, which includes increasing US production to around 1mn barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030,” he added.

Birrell went on to say that BP’s teams around the world were “delivering new barrels at pace and with lower production costs, in service of growing long-term value for shareholders".

Atlantis is one of BP’s longest-running platforms in the Gulf, with a gross production capacity of up to 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil. The Atlantis Drill Center 1 expansion is the second in a series of new projects BP is planning in the Gulf between now and 2030. According to the announcement, these projects are expected to allow BP capacity to produce more than 400,000 boepd from the US offshore region by then.

The start-up of Atlantis Drill Center 1 comes after BP brought the Argos Southwest Extension project online in August 2025. The Argos Southwest Extension is a three-well subsea tieback to the Argos platform that has added 20,000 boepd of gross peak annualised average production. Meanwhile, BP is working to bring the Atlantis Major Facility Expansion online in 2027, which is expected to further increase output from the Atlantis field using existing infrastructure.

“This expansion at Atlantis is further testament to the benefits of maximising production from our existing platforms in the Gulf of America, growing BP’s US offshore energy production safely and efficiently,” stated BP’s senior vice president for the Gulf and Canada, Andy Krieger.

BP operates Atlantis with a 56% working interest, while Woodside Energy owns the remaining 44% stake.

Separately, it was announced this week that Woodside’s CEO, Meg O’Neill, had been appointed BP’s next CEO after Murray Auchincloss decided to step down from his position as CEO and director of the board, effective on December 18.