As investors and stakeholders in the Nigeria oil and gas sector awaits Final Investment Decision (FID) on relatively unknown Preowei field expected in early 2019, French oil major company, Total is considering running a design competition to select a subsea contractor for its deep-water project expected to produce around 70,000boepd (barrel of Oil equivalent per day) at peak.
According to an Oslo-based media firm Upstream under Norges Handels og Sjøfartstidende AS or NHST Media Group, Total is “pushing a lot to do a design competition now” for Preowei field.
Norwegian media firm intelligence report gathered that supposing Total opts for an integrated subsea solution, the likely interested parties in any design competition would be Texas based multinational McDermott-BHGE (Baker Hughes), Italian oil and gas industry contractor Saipem-Aker, Schlumberger company headquartered in Houston, Texas Subsea 7-OneSubsea and U.K based TechnipFMC While Local contractors will also need to be heavily involved to meet tough local content requirements.
Another source disclosed to Upstream intelligence that TechnipFMC could jump straight to the head of the contractor queue for an integrated subsea order because of the ready availability of about seven FMC trees “which are sitting on the beach” in Nigeria.
“If you have the trees and load them with profit,” suggested this market watcher, “you can almost give away the SURF for free, so the others cannot compete”.
However, another Nigerian observer believes Total is unlikely to go down this route and will be keen to encourage competition “so that everybody is evaluated on the same basis”.
“There has been no formal contact with the major contractors but a pre-qualification exercise could begin in the coming months,” sources disclosed.
A successful contractor on Preowei could potentially also supply an integrated subsea system for the Egina South project, located 20 kilometres from Egina. Development of Preowei was being considered in 2007 as the base case called for 30 development wells tied back to Egina, some 25 kilometres away.
The French major began to talk up the possibility of producing Preowei in December 2017 when, after drilling Preowei-3, it reported an addition of approximately 80 to 100 Million barrels of oil (MMbo) to the full field contingent recoverable resources, bringing them to 140 to 200MMbo.
The Preowei-3 well, drilled to a final depth of 3,235 meters, encountered approximately 50 metres net of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs, in line with expectations. The well confirmed previous results from the Preowei-1B and Preowei-2 wells, which encountered approximately 55 metres of oil-bearing sandstone reservoir.
Recall, Total started up production on December 29, 2018 from the Egina field, located in around 1,600 meters of water depths, 150 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria. At plateau, the Egina field will produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day, which represents about 10 per cent of Nigeria’s production.
Total E&P Nigeria Limited (“TEPNG”), an affiliate of TOTAL has operated in the upstream sector of the Nigerian hydrocarbon industry for more than 50 years and has added over 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent to Nigeria’s production to date.
DIPO OLADEHINDE
