Unbiased operators outlined new efforts to maximise manufacturing in Africa’s mature oil markets – together with Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Angola – through the Upstream E&P Discussion board at African Power Week: Put money into African Energies 2024.
Africa’s mature oil markets are seeing plenty of unbiased corporations drive manufacturing features, prioritizing incremental exploration and progressive applied sciences to breathe new life into current property.
In Gabon, Perenco launched appraisal drilling close to its current Hylia South West discovery to determine extra reservoirs and estimate oil volumes. In the meantime, Trident Power launched a three-well infill drilling marketing campaign on Block G – dwelling to the mature Ceiba and Okume fields – offshore Equatorial Guinea earlier this 12 months.
“We’re constructing our technique round innovation and match for goal know-how. It’s good to discover financial methods to develop these fields. Know-how is vital in enabling us to increase the lifetime of the sphere,” mentioned Armel Simondin, CEO of Perenco S.A.
“Working mature fields is about mindset – having a really granular method, caring for the main points, and revisiting the entire data acquired on the asset. Our creativity in taking up mature fields and decreasing working prices is the place we will make a distinction. IOCs promote property as a result of they don’t match within the portfolio anymore – corporations like us are going to combat for the barrel and for the greenback,” mentioned Jean-Michel Jacoulot, CEO of Trident Power.
Capability constraints, ageing infrastructure and elevated operational downtime proceed to problem operators of mature fields. In line with Rahul Dhir, CEO of Tullow Oil, these points will be addressed via cost-control mechanisms and funding in infrastructure and facility upgrades, which have seen excessive exploration success charges in its mature markets.
“At our flagship Jubilee Discipline [in Ghana], we started sourcing the OEM contract internally, which has given us extra management and decrease prices. It’s a really holistic method,” mentioned Dhir, including, “In Gabon, we now have drilled roughly one exploration nicely per 12 months over the past 4 years, with a hit price of about 80%. The present infrastructure is there.”
Panelists emphasised the function of regulatory stability in successfully managing mature oil reservoirs, together with contractual frameworks that account for the distinctive, capital-intensive nature of mature fields.
“This stage of asset wants as a lot of a growth plan as the unique growth idea. To make these five-year funding plans, you want an underlying licensing and regulatory atmosphere. This offers us the runway to be assured to spend money on the asset. Underlying stability of the atmosphere is important,” mentioned Paul McDade, CEO of Afentra.
“Mature fields aren’t deliberate for within the early stage of contracts – many contracts are designed for greenfield funding. There may be nonetheless progress to be made on bettering these contracts. Mature fields require main funding as a result of you have to compensate for the lack of power within the reservoir,” mentioned Simondin.
Afentra is specializing in optimizing, redeveloping and increasing the lifespan of Africa’s legacy property. In Angola, the corporate just lately gained approval for the acquisition of Block 23, specializing in high-quality, long-life shallow water manufacturing property with important upside.
“In Angola, the part of mature fields is sort of early. With the asset we now have, we now have already found assets sitting close to infrastructure that simply haven’t been developed. We’ll go after that, earlier than we even have to start out spending exploration {dollars},” mentioned McDade.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Power Chamber.
Supply: African Power Chamber