With Gulf of Mexico (GOM) activity accelerating throughout both U.S. and Mexico waters, Australia’s BHP has given its stamp of approval to spend $258 million to advance the front-end engineering design phase for the Trion project in Mexico’s deepwater.

Mexico production

Studies would be centered on completing engineering and commercial arrangements toward potentially sanctioning the project by mid-2022.

BHP operates and holds a 60% stake in Mexico blocks AE-0092 and AE-0093, which contain the Trion discovery. A subsidiary of Mexico’s state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) has a 40% interest in the GOM blocks.

BHP has also given the go-ahead to Shenzi North, a U.S. GOM deepwater project it shares with Repsol SA.

BHP earmarked $544 million in capital expenditures (capex) for the...