The Thunder Horse oil field, located 150 miles southeast of New Orleans in the heart of the Gulf of Mexico, is one of the largest deepwater oil fields ever discovered.
It was first discovered in 1999 by bp and has been operated by the company ever since. It is thought that more than one billion barrels of oil lay beneath the waves at Thunder Horse – enough to last well into the 2030s.
That kind of scale demanded enormous ambition but, for a time, Thunder Horse seemed a cursed project.
Pumping was originally planned to commence in 2005, but the project's semi-submersible production platform was almost irreparably damaged by Hurricane Dennis in July of that year, with the strong winds almost capsizing the gigantic rig.
In light of the extensive pre-production hype surrounding the "world's largest production platform," it was a costly and embarrassing incident for bp.
