News that Shell’s Perdido platform has begun to produce oil is a significant moment for the companies who are renewing their efforts to extract oil from deep below the Gulf of Mexico’s waters.

These companies – many of them oil ‘supermajors’ including Chevron, BP, Exxon, and Total – have been making huge investments in new ultra-deepwater technology to retrieve crude oil from depths that would previously have been impossible, or uneconomic, to exploit. The Perdido facility sits on the seabed below 2.45km of water – which Shell helpfully explains is equivalent to six Empire Buildings stacked on top of each other and is more than 50 per cent deeper than any other commercial facility.

US domestic oil production notoriously began to decline in the 1970s and the hope is that these renewed efforts will lead to something of a resurgence for the country’s output – although it will be fairly fleeting.

Despite the challenges, plays like this are popular with the majors – numerous other ‘lower tertiary’ projects, backed by operators such as Chevron and BP, are expected to begin production in the next few years.