Atala oil field excites foreign investors

Foreign investors have indicated their desires to explore opportunities being presented by the Bayelsa State-owned Atala oil field.

Atala oil field located on OIl Mining Lease 46, is one of the 24 Marginal fields allocated to 31 indigenous companies and state-owned companies during the marginal fields licensing round in 2003.

Suffice to mention that out of the 24 marginal fields, Atala field is one of the eight fields developed by investors to a point of producing and contributing 1 per cent to Nigeria’s daily crude oil production.

During the Bayelsa State Investment and Economic Forum in Yenagoa last week, promoters of some foreign companies disclosed that they registered to participate in the economic forum to be able to meet officials of the state government for possible partnership.

One of the promoters from Houston, Texas in United States claimed that the meeting is necessary for him to showcase the success story of Bayelsa to his government. “We are quite aware of the short period of turning around the fortune of Atala within two years of the take over by Century Exploration and Production Limited through the initiative of Governor Dickson.

“Since the government has no business doing business, we are interested in replicating strategies adopted by Gov Dickson in other sectors in the State and Parts of Nigeria,”he assured.

As part of Gov Dickson’s restoration and creativity plan for Bayelsa State, he put the state in the nation’s oil and gas map as the first and only state that brought to production its oil field-Atala field. This is one of the achievements recorded by the Governor since his assumption of office on Feb 14, 2012.

Atala 1 well was successfully re-entered, completed, tested and rig released on Aug 11,2014. The extended Well test commenced on Dec 20,2014 with peak production of 6,000 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) but with planned production of 5000BOPD. The field has recorded estimated cumulative production of about 60,000 barrels in storage barges, This was test production of less than 20days and in good position to commence evacuation for export.