A Huge BP Find: 1B Barrels of Crude

BP is investing a lot more money into the Gulf of Mexico, and into cutting-edge technology overall—and it looks like that investment is already paying off. CNBC and Reuters report the company just discovered two new oil fields, plus 1 billion barrels of crude oil at its existing Thunder Horse oilfield off the coast of Louisiana. BP higher-ups say that pumping money into new seismic and data processing tech deserves credit for helping the company ID the discovery at Thunder Horse in weeks, instead of taking up to a year. "We are building on our world-class position, upgrading the resources at our fields through technology, productivity, and exploration success," BP exec Bernard Looney said in a statement.

And BP's not close to being done with big moves. The company also announced Tuesday a $1.3 billion expansion of its Atlantis oil field off the coast of New Orleans, a project that will involve drilling eight new wells and a subsea production system that's expected to up BP's output by 38,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed). That system is hoped to be operational by next year. With all of these initiatives and new finds, BP is aiming to increase its Gulf production overall from 300,000 boed now to 400,000 boed by the mid-2020s. (It took about four years for BP to finish "active cleanup" in the Gulf of Mexico after its 2010 spill.)