The Nigerian oil industry recorded another milestone on Wednesday on Wednesday as Total’s Egina $16 billion Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) berthed in the country from South Korea.
Located some 130 km off the coast of Nigeria at water depths of more than 1,500 m, the Egina oil field is one of our most ambitious ultra-deep offshore projects. For the most part, the project is being developed locally to accelerate the pace of technology transfer and expand the local industrial fabric.
Total began the drilling program on the Egina field in December 2014. This intense project will keep two rigs busy for a total of 3,000 days. Five out of the planned 44 subsea wells have already been drilled, at water depths of between 1,400 m and 1,700 m, and 13 more will be completed when the field comes on stream. They will be connected, using umbilicals and risers, to an FPSO designed to hold 2.3 million barrels of oil.
The facility currently berthed at the newly built 500-metre FPSO integration quayside at Ladol Island in Lagos was welcomed by Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, (TUPNI) and other partners in the Egina project – CNOOC, SAPETRO and PETROBRAS.
Mr. Nicolas Terraz, the Managing Director of the company, told newsmen on the arrival of the FPSO that the journey to Nigeria started on Oct. 31, 2017, from South Korea. Terrez said that the 330-metres long Egina FPSO is the largest FPSO ever installed in Nigeria.
He said that the FPSO would undergo the integration of six locally fabricated modules which would take place within the next six months.
According to him, this is a first for Nigeria and in fact for Africa. “The integration of the six locally fabricated topside modules at the SHI-MCI Yard before its final sail-away to the Egina field is a game changer as far as the execution of deep offshore oil and gas projects in the country is concerned.
“It is also a remarkable achievement in local content development in Nigeria.
“Being the first project to be launched after the enactment of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act in 2010, EGINA is advancing Nigerian content to record levels and has by far the highest quantum of local content completed for any oil and gas project in Nigeria, but also for Total’s projects worldwide,’’ he said.
The Total upstream boss said that several technological feats had been recorded by the various entities involved in the project.
“This includes two consecutive world records for the number of drilling days expended on drilling Egina wells, set by the drilling rig, West Jupiter, with duration of 22.7 and then 20.9 days respectively.
“The successful installation by the UFR contractor (Saipem) of the four production risers which are the heaviest risers ever installed in the company’s history. “Egina is the deepest offshore development carried out so far in Nigeria, with water depths over 1,500 meters,’’ he added.
Terraz said that the EGINA FPSO has been designed for 25 years of operations to produce about 200,000 barrels of oil per day (at Plateau). He said that the Egina operations would generate significant activities for local contractors in various sectors and continued to provide avenues for the training and development of Nigerians in various domains.
Terraz said that the Egina field was discovered by TUPNI in 2003 within the Oil Mining Licence 130 (OML130), some 200 kilometres south of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He said that the field is being developed by TUPNI in partnership with NNPC, CNOOC, SAPETRO and PETROBRAS.
He said that the project will add 200,000 barrels per day to Nigeria’s oil production (approximately 10 per cent of the country’s total oil production.
On her part, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Ms Hadiza Usman, called on all stakeholders to ensure strict compliance with the country’s statutory rules and regulations on the operation of newly-built FPSO Egina. She commended Total, LADOL Free Zone, the Trade Zone and Samsung Heavy Industry (SHI) for the synergy through which the Egina emerged.
Samsung Heavy Industries had won the contract for the building of the FPSO at the cost of $3.3 billion after a competitive bidding process.
