April 4, 2012. Royal Dutch Shell Plc will shut the Mars deep-water platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico in the second quarter for planned work. Shell, based in the Hague, will perform maintenance on the site, located about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of New Orleans, and conduct work related to a second platform, the Olympus, that the company is building in the Mars field. Shell says it expects to begin production at Mars B Olympus beginning in 2015. Olympus will be able to process about 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The existing Mars platform produces about 190,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. Shell has a 71.5 percent working interest in Mars, with London-based BP Plc holding the rest.