Vito: Providing Energy Today and into the Future
Located some 150 miles southeast of New Orleans sits Vito, Shell’s newest offshore platform, and the workers that spend 50% of their time in the US Gulf of Mexico to deliver a secure supply of energy.
Vito: Powering Our Lives Today and Tomorrow
It’s not uncommon to hear about a family of doctors, painters, engineers, or electricians. And with each generation, progress is made through new technologies or ways of thinking. The oil and natural gas industry is no different. As the demand for reliable energy remains, so does the need to continue to rethink how we produce energy for today and the future.
Kurt is an engineer and so is his father, brother and all three of his children. For 35 years, Kurt has worked in Shell’s oil and natural gas business in the Gulf of Mexico. This region’s energy industry underpins communities, small and large.
Kurt Shallenberger, Project Manager, ShellThe oil and gas development feeds this community. It creates jobs. It provides stable security of energy and powers people's lives. Offshore in the Gulf of Mexico may seem like a distant place, but it’s actually a very big community of people, from Texas to Florida, out there 365 days a year – working hard to bring stable energy to you.
Smaller, more simplified design
With this smaller, more simplified design, Shell didn’t just realize a more cost-effective platform to build but a more efficient one too.
Shell went “back to basics to make things simpler [and] more efficient,” Kurt says. “When you make things more efficient, when you make things smaller and more compact, what you find is you get added benefits. Relative to projects we've done before, we've shrunk down by about 70% in size. Less steel, less cable, less space, less power. All of that reduces our impact on the environment, both its footprint here in the ocean and the emissions that it makes.” When you have a smaller platform you won’t just see a reduction in size. There will also be a reduction in the estimated electrical power load consumption, more efficient waste heat recovery units, and optimized turbines to better fit the required load demand needed to operate a smaller Vito.
Oil production safely began in February 2023 at Vito
Equally important, the reimagined design Kurt and the team delivered will serve as a blueprint for other deep-water projects in the Gulf of Mexico, as Shell continues to look for ways to improve its operations, both economically and environmentally.
