Week in review

The spotlight last week was firmly on the African continent, where there was a lot off movement offshore Senegal and Mauritania, as well as in Nigeria. Having restored its output to around 2 million bopd, the country now seeks to consolidate progress.

Nigeria will raise its budget for the country’s amnesty programme to almost USD 111 million, the presidency announced over the weekend.

Close to USD 99 million is to be paid out immediately, followed by another USD 12 million at a later stage. The new budget is almost triple that of the USD 63 million allocated to stemming the militancy across the oil-rich Niger Delta last year.

Nigeria is working to secure funds to help expand power generation capacity, improve power distribution and increase access to electricity.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics in Monday, power generation in the country averaged close to 3.7 GW during the first quarter, with a 5.8-GW peak registered in January.

Shell is reportedly close to restarting the Trans Forcados pipeline, sources familiar with the work on Nigeria’s oil export outlet said on Tuesday.

An attack in February 2016 halted crude transports, and the pipeline has been mostly shut in since. There was a brief window of operations in October last year, but another hit in November once more disrupted flows.

Eni will shortly sign a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources of Nigeria for the construction of a refinery. According to Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the two parties have “reached an agreement” on a 150,000-bpd greenfield refinery project. Speaking to reporters in Abuja on May 9, he said that an MoU is being prepared.

Rising Star
BP on Monday said it had made a “major” gas find on the Cayar Offshore Profond block offshore Senegal.

The find was made in the Yakaar-1 exploration well, drilled using the Atwood Achiever in close to 2,550 metres of water. The well was drilled to a total depth of some 4,700 metres.

“Yakaar-1 follows the earlier exploration success that led to the Tortue discovery and further confirms our belief that offshore Senegal and Mauritania is a world-class hydrocarbon basin,” the CEO for BP Upstream, Bernard Looney, said in a press release.

Total has gained a 90% stake in the C7 block offshore Mauritania, the French major said on Friday. It will be working alongside state-owned SMHPM, which maintains 10% in the 7,300-kilometre asset.

Already a stakeholder in the deepwater C9 exploration area, Friday’s exploration and production contract increases Total’s contiguous exploration area to more than 17,000 square kilometres.

Fortuna Fortunes
Elsewhere on the continent, Ophir Energy announced the award of the midstream contracts for the Fortuna floating LNG offshore Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday.

Keppel Shipyard won the primary contract to convert the 126,000-square-metre Gandria vessel. Black & Veatch’s Prico technology will be used, and the EPC company will also do detailed engineering and process design, procure topside equipment and assist with commissioning.

“The award of the midstream construction completes another milestone as we approach FID. We remain firmly on schedule for the FID of Africa’s first deepwater FLNG Project in mid-2017,“ Ophir CEO Nick Cooper said in a company press release.

West Nile Delta
Also on Wednesday, BP said it had commenced gas production at the offshore Taurus and Libra fields eight months ahead of schedule.

The two Egyptian fields, part of the larger West Nile Delta project, delivered first gas via a 42-kilometre tie-back line to the domestic grid on March 24.

Production currently averages in excess of 19.8 mcm (700 mcf) of natural gas per day and is sourced from nine wells, six of which are in the Taurus field.