Positive results from Ebok flow tests

Offshore staff

LONDON– The Floating Storage and Offloading vessel (FSO) for the Ebok development offshore Nigeria is on its way to the field location, according to operator Afren.

The FSO was converted from a tanker at the Yulian shipyard in Shenzhen, China. It has an oil storage capacity of 1.2 MMbbl, and will be equipped for regular crude offtake by tankers up to VLCC size.

Its arrival should coincide with that of the Mobile Offshore Production Unit (MOPU), expected in late January 2011. The MOPU, which has been refurbished at the Gulf Copper shipyard in Galveston, has been converted from a jack-up: the program involved replacement of the rig’s drilling package with a newly fabricated processing module capable of producing 50,000 b/d of oil; installing new accommodation quarters for up to 30 crew; and a new helideck.

The Adriatic lX jack up is currently drilling at the Ebok field. Production testing has been conducted on three of the five horizontal producer wells as part of the Phase 1 development.

Test results to date have delivered a constrained aggregate rate of 12,500 b/d. Afren is confident that it will be able to exceed its original Phase 1 production forecast of 15,000 b/d.

Installation of the Ebok Phase 2 wellhead platform is currently under way at the West Fault Block location, is should be completed in the next few weeks.

The jack-up GSF High Island should start development drilling, comprising four horizontal producer wells and up to two water injectors, early in February 2011 after infill drilling operations have been completed on the Okoro field.

Phase 2 should start up in early March 2011, with combined production of more than 35,000 b/d expected from the two phases by mid-2011.

12/27/2010