Niger Top News

Lagos set to join oil producing states As Production Begins This Year

With the award of a rig contract to carry out the drilling and completion programme for the Aje shallow-water field offshore Lagos, the first oil production is expected to begin in the state by December this year.

The operator of the Oil Mining Lease 113 has, on behalf of the joint venture partners, entered into a rig contract with Saipem for the Scarabeo 3 drilling rig to carry out the drilling and completion programme for the Aje Field Cenomanian oil development, Panoro Energy said in a statement on Monday.

The joint venture partners led by Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company Limited (the operator) had in October last year taken the final investment decision to develop the first phase of the Aje field.

According to the statement, the Scarabeo 3 rig is a semi-submersible rig currently stationed offshore Lagos. The rig will be moved 18 nautical miles to the Aje drilling location and will be used to carry out well operations for the first phase of the Aje Cenomanian Oil field development that includes two subsea production wells.

It said the well operations would comprise the completion of the existing Aje-4 well as a production well, and the drilling and completion of a new well, Aje-5, which would be drilled to the Aje-2 subsurface location.

The Aje-2 well is said to have demonstrated high reservoir productivity in a Cenomanian production test conducted in 1997, flowing approximately 3,700 barrels of oil per day of 41˚API oil under suboptimal well conditions.