French supermajor TotalEnergies has renewed for 20 years its OML130 production licence offshore Nigeria, paving the way for front-end engineering and design work to get under way for its Preowei discovery to be tied back to its Egina floating production, storage and offloading vessel.
Keith Hill, chief executive of indirect Egina partner Africa Oil late last year said the long-delayed Preowei project would be “ready to go” once a licence extension had been granted.
“We’ve done a development, we’ve done all the engineering studies and we’re ready to pull the trigger. Once we’ve pulled the trigger, you’re talking about two to two-and-a-half years to first production,” said Hill.
Located 150 kilometres off the Nigerian coast, OML130 contains the prolific Akpo and Egina fields which came on stream in 2009 and 2018 respectively. In 2022, production amounted to 282,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Almost 30% was gas that was sent to the Nigeria LNG plant, notably contributing to Europe’s energy security, noted TotalEnergies.
In addition to the subsea tie-back Preowei development candidate, the deep-water asset hosts Akpo West — a short-cycle project — that is expected to come into production by the end of 2023.
“Through the OML130 licence renewal, TotalEnergies is pleased to continue its contribution to the development of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. This 20-year extension will enable us to move forward with the FEED studies on the Preowei tie-back project which aims to valorise a discovery using existing facilities in line with company’s strategy focusing on low cost and low-emission assets,” said Henri-Max Ndong-Nzue, senior vice president Africa, exploration and production at TotalEnergies.
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TotalEnergies earlier this year embarked on a development drilling campaign in an attempt to slow the production decline at Egina that Nigerian government data showed had slumped by 28% last year.
The French energy giant operates OML 130 with a 24% interest on behalf of partners CNOOC 45%, Sapeto 15%, Prime 130 16% and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company as concessionaire of the PSC.