After the success recorded with the Egina project, French oil giant, TOTAL said it will approve plans to proceed with the Ikike field development offshore Nigeria in the coming months.
According to Reuters, Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of Total revealed this while speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of Nigerian and French businesses in Paris where he also revealed plans by the oil-giant to expand its Nigerian LNG project this year.
“There is a huge potential in Nigeria, it is probably the most prolific country in West Africa in terms of oil and gas and it is time to launch new projects and we are working on many of them,” Pouyanne told journalists.
The 60,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Ikike project is one of several projects the group has earmarked in Nigeria for a Final Investment Decision, (FID) including the 70,000 bpd deepwater Preowei project, which would help Total increase its oil production in the country.
“The market is very good today to do that, it is a very interesting project and the partners are in line to develop it… 2019 should be the year of expanding Nigeria LNG,” he added.
The Ikike field is located in the OML 99 license offshore Nigeria, with Total being the operator with a 40 percent stake. The project is expected to be developed as a tie-back to Amenam (5 wells) platform.
The CEO of Total further called on the government to issue new exploration licences, noting that the country’s oil and gas sector had been dormant in recent years in terms of exploration and new projects due to uncertainties and the ongoing discussions over Nigeria’s oil industry regulation bill.
“I hope the new government that will come after the election will launch new tenders for awarding new exploration licenses,” he said.
Total started production at the Egina-Total SA’s $4 billion Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel off the coast of Nigeria this month.
At 330 meters (1,080 feet) long, it’s the largest FPSO ever built by the French major and it will operate further offshore and in deeper waters than anyone else has tried so far in Nigeria — a sign of growing confidence in the technology required to operate such assets. Egina is the first offshore field to start production in Nigeria since Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Usan in 2012.
Nigeria is currently pumping just over 2 million barrels of oil a day and it plans to roughly double that by 2020, a target that could prove difficult to achieve given delays that often occur in previous developments.
Olufikayo Owoeye
