First oil has been achieved from the Aje field, offshore Nigeria, according to field partner Panoro Energy.
The field is in OML 113, in the western part of Nigeria in the Dahomey Basin, and operated by Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company. Subsea installation activities had been underway at Aje since January and were completed in early March ready for the hook-up of the Front Puffin floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO), which arrived in Nigeria 16 March.
Oil produced from the Aje field, which is in 100-1000m water depth about 24km offshore, will be stored on the Front Puffin, which has production capacity of 40,000 b/d and storage capacity of 750,000 bo. Flow rates will be provided in Panoro’s next operations update, following a period of commissioning and well stabilisation.
Panoro CEO John Hamilton, said: “We are extremely pleased to announce the start of first oil production at Aje. This is a transformational milestone for Panoro and represents a great achievement by the Aje project teams. It is also a key building block in our strategy to become a full cycle E&P company focused on West Africa. The commencement of production at Aje is also significant for Nigeria as it is the first commercial production for the country in the emerging Dahomey Basin.”
The Aje field contains hydrocarbon resources in sandstone reservoirs in three main levels - a Turonian gas condensate reservoir, a Cenomanian oil reservoir and an Albian gas condensate reservoir.
AGR TRACS International has previously calculated the gross Cenomanian oil Proved plus Probable Reserves estimate associated the Aje-4 and Aje-5 wells, and the gross Contingent Resources estimate associated with the future drilling of Aje-6 and Aje-7 wells. This was estaimted at 23.4 MMbbl and 15.7 MMbbl respectively (on a gross basis), indicating a mid-case expected ultimate recovery of 39.1 MMbbl from the Cenomanian Oil Reservoir once all four wells have been drilled. AGR TRACS International also calculated the Turonian gas and condensate/oil best estimate gross contingent resource as 163 MMboe, says Panoro.