I agree that 300k doesn't do much, and my point certainly isn't that things are rosy there. Yes, it has been hyped to death. But read this:

Thunder Horse is one of the key discoveries upon which the company will grow its future Gulf of Mexico production. Designed to process 250,000 barrels of oil per day and 200 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, Thunder Horse will be the largest producer in the Gulf. The field will be supported by a network of 25 subsea wells.

250 k/day. Wow. At least Saudi completed their project somewhat on time. If something causes you to get out of Dodge, that snippet above should be it. Or perhaps to at least get out of BP stock.

I am partly interested in it for clues to what is going on in a broader context. Their underlying message is "see, the latest technology helps get oil out of bad rock". Of course, the other way to interpret it is "all we have left is bad rock". They are currently working on Khurais, which ain't no north Ghawar either, and I am interested in parallels between the two developments.

A big problem is that we don't really know what the depletion rates of their older fields are. One possibility is to look at the number of new wells going in. Especially if these are MRC wells, and in the good rock of the north, the productivity should be high. If they put in 100 wells and each flow 5k/day, that is 500 kbarrels/day that those wells are replacing. What happens when they run out of real estate for new wells?