In an announcement on 6 April 2020, Equinor revealed it has made a discovery at the Monument prospect in the northwest quadrant of the Walker Ridge (WR) protraction area in the deepwater central Gulf of Mexico. Well WR 272 1S0B0 (API 608124013000) encountered about 200 ft (61 m) of net oil pay with good reservoir characteristics in Paleogene-aged sands. The well was drilled to a total depth of 33,348 ft (10,164 m). Monument is Equinor's first operated well in the Gulf of Mexico since 2015.  Bjorn Inge Braathe, the company's senior vice president of exploration in North America, stated, "We are pleased to have proved an accumulation of moveable hydrocarbons in the Monument exploration well. However, determining the full potential of the discovery will require further appraisal drilling."  On 15 December 2019 Pacific Drilling's drillship "Pacific Khamsin" arrived on location to begin operations at monument, where the company will drill a deviated well from Walker Ridge block 316 (G36084) into neighboring Walker Ridge block 272 (G35081) to test the Paleogene section. On 12 December 2019, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved the Application for Permit to Drill the well in 6,337 ft (1,932 m) of water, about 185 mi (298 km) southwest of the onshore support base at Port Fourchon, Louisiana. This location corresponds to location "G" in Equinor's exploration plan N-10060, approved by the BOEM on 28 August 2019. The well is expected to take 100 days to drill and TA/PA.  The well will target the Paleogene-aged Wilcox sand section as its primary objective with a proposed total depth of about 34,000 ft (10,363 m). The prospect is near existing Paleogene tests including Marathonâs Solomon prospect, 8 mi (13 km) to the northwest in WR 225, and Chevronâs Lewis prospect on Monumentâs WR 316. The Solomon and Lewis wells were both permanently abandoned as dry holes. About 17 miles (28 km) north of Monument lies the LLOG-operated Shenandoah field covering WR 51, WR 52 and the northern half of WR 53, an appraised Wilcox oil find originally discovered by Anadarko in 2009. LLOG has called the field a "100 to 400 million barrels of oil equivalent discovery" and expects a Final Investment Decision (FID) in the first half of 2020.  WR 272 was originally leased by a partnership of Equinor (then Statoil at 66.67%) and Samson Offshore (at 33.33%) with a bonus bid of USD 10.1 MM at Sale 227 in March 2013, beating out a competing sole bid by Anadarko of USD 3.2 MM. Over the years, Samson left the partnership, Anadarko and Venari joined and then left the partnership, leaving Equinor with 100% working interest. In November 2019 Equinor announced it had farmed out a 20% stake to Repsol in WR 272 and WR 316. BOEM records show that effective 17 January 2020, working interest is divide between operator Equinor (50%), Progress Resources USA (30%) and Repsol (20%). Progress Resources USA is a subsidiary of Malaysian company Petronas, and Monument represents the company's entry into the US Gulf of Mexico.
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