Lagos oilfield output hit 1.2 million barrels in 2018

Kindly Share This Story:

Crude oil production from Aje field, offshore Lagos, rose to 1.2 million barrels in 2018, one of the joint venture partners have said.

The PUNCH reported in November last year that the field’s output declined by 75,936 barrels to 912,870 barrels in 2017, citing data from the Department of Petroleum Resources.

The field, which began production with 127,224 barrels of oil in May 2016, produced a total of 988,806 barrels that year, according to the reconciled production figures obtained from the DPR.

Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company Limited, a wholly owned indigenous firm, is the operator of the Oil Mining Lease 113, where the field is located. Other partners are Pan Petroleum Aje Limited (a subsidiary of Panoro Energy), New Age Exploration Nigeria Limited, EER (Colobus) Nigeria Limited, and PR Oil & Gas Nigeria Limited (the holder of MX Oil’s investment in the field).

London-based MX Oil, in its latest update on Aje field, said operations at OML 113 during 2018 continued to make good progress underpinned by strong performance of the Turonian and Cenomanian reservoirs, which continued in line with the operating partners’ expectations.

It said, “Production from the two wells in the Aje field within the OML 113 licence area has continued at a very stable rate, achieving a total produced volume for 2018 of approximately 1,200,000 barrels of oil. Currently the field is producing around 3,150 barrels of oil per day.

The firm said the partnership successfully completed the ninth lifting from the Aje field in late November 2018, lifting approximately 315,000 barrels of oil, adding that the 10th lifting was scheduled to occur in late February 2019.

It said, “Following the announcement in August 2018 that consent from the Minister of Petroleum Resources had been received for the renewal of the OML 113 for another term of 20 years, the Aje partners have now fully paid the $9.8m licence renewal fee.

“The continuous oil production of Aje-4 and Aje-5 is above initial expectations and has encouraged the operating partner group to approach RPS Group with the purpose to establishing the viability of additional development of Aje.”

According to MX Oil, RPS Group was appointed in late October 2018 to conduct an assessment of the potential development activity associated with the additional upside oil resources.

It said the modelling work conducted to date had reinforced the partners’ view of the potential for new oil wells in both the Turonian and Cenomanian.

“RPS Group’s work is now expected to conclude in Q1 2019 and will form the basis for a decision on further drilling in 2019 with a view to a full development project thereafter,” the firm said.

It said the operating partners considered that the initial development drilling might result in peak oil production rates of 8,000 to 12,000 bopd and the full development drilling might increase production to 20,000 bopd and 100 million standard cubic feet per day of gas.

MX Oil said, “The partnership expects that the initial development drilling is likely to require one new development well in the Cenomanian reservoir and one horizontal side track development well in the Turonian reservoir. The full development project will be subject to the availability of project finance in the future to allow a number of new wells to be developed.

“The operating partners continue to assess options to meet the funding requirements for the completion of the additional wells expected in Phase 2 and later to the full field development. The operating partners continue to be cognisant of the impracticality of funding projects the size of the Aje development by equity and have commenced steps to procure debt funding for Phase 2 and, potentially, the future stages of development.”


Kindly Share This Story:

Related Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

amehnews greetings

x
%d bloggers like this: