• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Exxonmobil joins Shell, Seplat in Nigeria rig hunt

Exxonmobil has joined super oil major Shell and indigenous independent producer, Seplat Petroleum in the hunt for oil rigs to carry out drilling campaigns in Nigeria.

Shell and Seplat are hunting for land rigs but Exxonmobil is prequalifying rig owners for what could be a five-year deep-water drilling campaign in Nigeria.

The supermajor also has interest in onshore oil assets and has started a tender exercise covering four-year construction and installation services contracts. The offshore bid exercise entails a contract that may run

for up to five years, comprising a firm period of one year plus four 12-month extension options,

The US supermajor plans to begin deployment of the deepwater rig in the fourth quarter of 2020 on production sharing contract acreage that it operates in partnership with state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The chosen rig will have to drill, complete, test, temporarily abandon and workover wells in water depths ranging from 1000 to 1800 metres.

The active rig count in Nigeria had fallen by half year-on-year but recent hunt for land rigs by Anglo-dutch supermajor Shell and Nigerian independent Seplat Petroleum probably showed exploration and production activities were about to pick-up again.

Shell is getting ready for a major drilling programme on its acreage in Nigeria and has gone to the market for two jack-ups and a pair of land rigs, one of which will have to handle highpressure, high- temperature wells. Seplat Petroleum is also searching for a land drilling rig for work on Oil Mining Licence (OML) 53.

Seplat Petroleum, as part of a joint venture with state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had announced the pre qualification of contractors for a two-year contract, with a one-year extension option, that was due to begin this quarter. Responses were due for submission on 10 July. Seplat did not specify exactly where in OML 53 the rig would be working.

As of June 2018, Africa’s largest crude producer had 32 oil rigs according to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR). But this has fallen to 14 rigs as of June 2019, according to the oil cartel’s latest July MOMR. This is more than a 50 percent decrease.

According to Iain Esau, an analyst at upstreamonline.com, a pre-qualification exercise is underway, with responses due for submission to Lagos-based Exxonmobil Exploration & Production Nigeria Ltd (EEPNL) by 7 August.

EEPNL operates OML 133, which hosts the Erha and Erha North fields that have been developed via a floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

Erha located in a water depth of 1000 metres came on stream in 2006 with its floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) able to handle 150,000 barrels per day of oil and 315 million cubic feet per day of gas. OML 133 is estimated to host about 500 million barrels of recoverable oil.

Rig count is a function of the level of exploration, development and production activities occurring in the oil and gas sector. A drop in active rig count means oil exploration and production activities in Nigeria have decreased.