Africa-focused oil and gas company Lekoil has increased production at the Otakikpo field offshore Nigeria to 7,600 barrels of oil per day.
Since starting production on February 20 , daily production levels have steadily increased from 5,000 bopd to 6,400 bopd in October and 7,600 bopd through November 27.
Lekoil said on Friday that additional perforations in one of two production strings at well-003 were recently performed before re-opening it for production.
The Otakikpo joint venture partners, Lekoil as the financial and technical partner and Green Energy International Limited (GEIL) as the operator, agreed to hold production at current levels for a few more weeks to gather and analyze essential production and reservoir data and information before increasing production at the field.
Funding talks
As the field nears Phase One target production of 10,000 bopd, the joint venture is now focused on Phase Two of the field development plan which aims to increase production up to 20,000 bopd.
Phase Two includes 3D seismic coverage of the entire Otakikpo field, neighboring prospects, and the incremental development of the rest of the field with new wells planned.
Next steps will be to gather the 3D seismic data, process and interpret the data and subsequently release an updated competent person’s report. The company expects the Phase Two development to be fully funded by industry players, which the company is already in discussions with.
Lekoil added that it completed five liftings so far and received cash proceeds within 30 days of each lift as prescribed by the terms of the crude sales agreement with Shell Trading. The company had an average premium for the Otakikpo blend of $1 or more above Brent pricing since inception. At current oil prices, the cash netback is above $30 per barrel.