The dream of Lagos State becoming one of the oil producing states is moving fast closer to reality, as the operator projected that the Well in Oil Mining Lease 113 (OML 113) would be churning out the first oil by December.
A joint venture partner, Panoro Energy ASA, in its operations update recently, said the operator of the OML113 licence 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.
The statement however said that well operations are expected to commence in early third quarter of 2015 and are likely to take approximately 90 days to complete. Once well operations have been completed, subsea equipment will be installed and the wells will be tied back to the Front Puffin FPSO, currently undergoing refurbishment in Singapore.
Aje is an offshore field located in the western part of Nigeria in the Dahomey Basin at the border with Benin, with first oil targeted for December 2015. The field is situated in water depths ranging from 100 to 1,000 meters about 24 kilometre from the coast.
The Chief Executive Officer, Panoro Energy, John Hamilton, said: “Panoro is very pleased to be entering into the rig contract for the drilling and completion of the Aje development wells. We have been able to achieve a lower rig rate than was expected when the Final Investment Decision was made in October 2014.
“With well operations expected to commence in the next few weeks, we will continue moving towards our incremental growth strategy of converting Panoro’s discovered resource base into commercial production and generating positive cash flow in 2016.”
