When the Obama administration announced a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, politicians and industry spokespeople howled. The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the Macondo well was tragic, some said, but there was no reason to shut down an entire industry sector that otherwise was following the rules and operating safely.
Conspiracy theories that President Barack Obama would try to kill the industry with onerous new regulations proliferated in some circles. Even if the moratorium eventually was lifted, the naysayers said, companies might take their rigs, jobs and tax money to new locales and not come back for many years.
But at LLOG Exploration, it was no time to panic. As detailed in a feature from the spring issue of 10/12 Industry Report, the Louisiana company was on the cusp of launching its biggest project to date at what would come to be known as the Who Dat offshore oil field.
“I think there were a number of people that were surprised we went forward at that time, not knowing what all the regulations would be,” says Rick Fowler, the company’s vice president for deepwater projects. “We felt there had to be a way for us to operate in the Gulf of Mexico, so we went forward with the project.”
And they were right.
Operating somewhat under the radar from its Covington headquarters, LLOG is the top privately owned liquids producer in the United States, according to one ranking. As an independent company that competes toe-to-toe with the big boys, it follows its own judgment, not that of stockholders or Wall Street.
LLOG was founded in 1977, primarily to develop prospects in south Louisiana. As the company grew, its focus expanded to include the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. In 2004, LLOG purchased seismic data covering a portion of the Gulf known to the offshore industry as the Mississippi Canyon. It bid $6.77 million for a lease in the canyon the next year, a fairly high number for previously owned acreage. But the new data convinced LLOG—and several other companies whose bids had fallen short—that the area still had serious commercial potential.
Inspired by its own results and those of competitors drilling nearby, LLOG successfully bid almost $23.7 million for an adjacent lease and traded with another company for a third section. LLOG now had all the components of what it later dubbed the Who Dat field, named, as you may have guessed, during the New Orleans Saints’ 2009-2010 Super Bowl run.
The Who Dat development is a big part of LLOG’s shift from “who’s that?” to the “who’s who” list of the Gulf’s independent players.
“It is certainly the largest thing that we’ve done in our history,” Fowler says.
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