Jan-2017: Eni has spudded an exploration well in the Contract Area D offshore Libya. The well, B1-16/3, will be drilled in 518 feet water depth, and its main objective is to test the Metlaoui reservoir group. Drilling is expected to last for 64 days. The Contract Area D (NC41) was granted to Eni under the EPSA IV contract model signed in June 2008.
Jan-2017: The Angolan liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility has resumed production after being shut down in late December 2016. The Chevron operated plant was shut down to allow engineers to complete repair work. It has repeatedly been shut down for lengthy periods since it first started production in 2013, including a two year shutdown between 2014 and 2016 to fix design flaws.
Dec-2016: Nigeria’s first deep water project, the Bonga field, will be shut down for one month starting from Feb-2017 to complete turnaround maintenance work. This is a setback for Nigeria, which was unable to attain its OPEC production allocation of 2.2 million stock tank barrels of oil per day (stb/d) in 2016 due to asset damage by militant attacks. The Shell operated field, located in block OML-118, produces 10 percent of Nigeria’s total production, and supplies gas to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) plant located at Bonny Island.
Dec-2016: ExxonMobil has announced that its deep water Mesurado-1 exploration well in Liberia did not find any oil and gas. The well was drilled in Block LB-13, 50 miles offshore Liberia in 2500m water depth using Seadrill’s West Saturn drillship. The well, targeting oil in a sequence of Late Cretaceous Santonian aged sands, intersected 475 feet of net sand, of which 387 feet was deemed to be of reservoir quality. However, no hydrocarbons were indicated by the logging while drilling operations performed across the targeted intervals. The well will be plugged and abandoned, and additional work on the 3D seismic interpretation will be completed.
Oct-2016: The Italian company Eni completed drilling operations in the sixth well in the Zohr gas field offshore deep water Egypt, as production tests on its fifth well confirmed that the recoverable reserves had increased to 30 trillion standard cubic feet (TSCF) of gas. 5 billion USD will be invested in the first phase of the field development project. It takes 40 days to drill one well in the deep water asset, and each well costs 100 MMUSD.
July-2015: Tanzania announced plans to start testing its new 542km natural gas pipeline between Mtwara and Dar es Salaam. The test will commence on 29 July 2015, and the pipeline will deliver gas for power generation and other applications. Initial capacity will be 80 MMSCFD (million standard cubic feet per day) gas.