Panoro Energy, an independent E&P company with assets in Nigeria and Gabon, has announced that the first oil production from the Aje field, offshore Nigeria, started on Tuesday, May 3, 2016.
The field, discovered in 1997, is located on the OML 113 license offshore Nigeria with Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company as the operator, and Panoro as a partner in the licence.
According to Panoro, 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 FPSO, which arrived in Nigeria on March 16.
Oil produced from the Aje field will be stored on the Front Puffin which has production capacity of 40,000 barrels of oil per day and storage capacity of 750,000 barrels, the company said.
Panoro’s Chief Executive Officer, 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.”
Aje is an offshore field located in OML 113 in the western part of Nigeria in the Dahomey Basin. The field is situated in water depths ranging from 100 to 1,000 metres about 24 km from the coast. 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 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. At that time AGR TRACS International calculated these as 23.4MMbbl and 15.7MMbbl respectively (on a gross basis), indicating a mid-case expected ultimate recovery of 39.1MMbbl 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.