Tallest oil platform

What to remember

Only 75 m of the Petronius platform stand above the water. The rest reaches down to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, 210 km east-southeast of New Orleans, and in all it measures 640 m from the mudline to the tip of the flare boom. The jacket alone is 509 m tall.

Built from 1997 to 2000 by Gulf Island Fabrication at a cost of $500 million, it is operated by Chevron (originally Texaco) and Marathon Oil.

It has been called the tallest freestanding structure in the world from 2000 to 2006. That claim is disputed: the platform is partly held up by buoyancy, and it is unknown whether it could stand on its own on land. Its multi-deck topsides measure 64 m by 43 m by 18.3 m high and hold 21 well slots.