March 16, 2015

The towering Big Foot platform was towed away from the wharf at Kiewit Offshore Services on March 13. It was headed for Chevron Corp.'s Big Foot deepwater oil field in the Gulf of Mexico about 225 miles south of New Orleans.

The platform had been a visual presence on the Corpus Christi Bay shoreline for two years while hundreds of workers and contractors completed the job of building and installing all of the structure above the basic hull. The hull was built in South Korea and arrived at Ingleside in March 2013 after a two-month voyage around the Cape of Good Hope.

The roughly $5.1 billion Big Foot platform is 500 feet tall from the top of its flare boom to the bottom of its four-legged hull. It has quarters for a crew of 200 and each deck is described as being football field sized.

It has the capacity to process 75,000 barrels of oil and 25 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. Chevron has estimated that the Big Foot field, discovered in 2006, has a 20 year life and potential to yield more than 200 million barrels of oil equivalent. Initial production from the field is anticipated by the end of the year.

Big Foot is a joint venture of Chevron U.S.A., Statoil and Marubeni Oil & Gas.

UPDATE - Big Foot Returns to Ingleside

October 14, 2015 - Big Foot was towed back to Kiewit Offshore while owners investigate the failure of equipment used to latch the platform to the seafloor.


Big Foot near the Kiewit fabrication yard


Big Foot offshore from Port Aransas heading into the Gulf