Australia’s Woodside Energy has approved the 100,000 barrel per day Sangomar project, offshore Senegal, launching agreements with suppliers and putting the field on course to begin production in 2023.
Woodside announced the final investment decision (FID), triggering deals with three main suppliers. MODEC will supply the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, Subsea Integration Alliance (SIA) will provide the umbilicals and production systems, while Diamond Offshore will take two well-drilling contracts.
FID was taken for the first phase of work on Sangomar, which will target a resource of 231 million barrels. This will be produced from the lower reservoirs, which were described as less complicated, with some pilot work on the upper reservoirs.
Approval of the work has led Woodside to book another 60mn barrels of 2P reserves net. This is based on the expectation that Senegal’s state-owned Petrosen will choose to increase its stake in the field from its current 10% to 18%, reducing Woodside’s share to 31.89%.
Woodside’s CEO Peter Coleman said the company looked “forward to progressing the project towards first oil in early 2023 and expect that our experience in offshore FPSO developments will support its delivery on cost and schedule.
Senegal’s government approved the plan yesterday, and has now executed the host government agreement.
Subsea
SIA, a venture between Subsea 7 and Schlumberger’s OneSubsea subsidiary, said it would provide umbilicals, risers, flowlines and production systems for the project. The unit did not disclose a specific contract value, but said it was worth somewhere between $500 million and $750m.
Offshore work will take place from 2021 to 2023 using Subsea 7’s reel-lay, flex-lay and light construction vessels.
Engineering will be performed by Subsea 7 in Sutton and Suresnes, France. A base in Senegal will support the offshore campaign and conduct site receipt testing and equipment storage.
Gilles Lafaye, Subsea 7’s vice president Africa Region, said: “We are delighted to expand our operations to Senegal adding to our network of local presences in West Africa. Subsea 7 brings decades of experience in working safely and reliably in the region as well as bringing global engineering and execution capabilities to support Senegal as it increases energy production.”
Stuart Fitzgerald, deputy CEO of SIA, said: “Subsea 7 and OneSubsea, through our Subsea Integration Alliance, have been working closely with Woodside since before the FEED award. his award reflects our successful experience of previous projects delivered by the alliance and a strong relationship built over many years with Woodside.”
FPSO
MODEC noted the FPSO was scheduled for delivery in early 2023. It will be permanently moored in 780 metres of water with an external turret mooring system, which is supplied by SOFEC, a MODEC unit.
The company had won a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the FPSO in February 2019.
In addition to handling 100,000 bpd of crude, the vessel will have capacity of 130 million cubic feet (3.68 million cubic metres) per day, 145,000 bpd of water injection and be able to store 1.3 million barrels of crude.
MODEC has provided FPSOs to other locations in West Africa but this is a first for Senegal. “We consider West Africa, where numerous offshore oil and gas fields have been discovered in recent years, as one of our most important core regions, and this contract award should geographically reinforce our business portfolio,” said MODEC’s CEO and president Yuji Kozai.
Drilling
Diamond Offshore has said it will provide the Ocean Blackhawk to Woodside from the first quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023. The Ocean BlackRhino will start in the first quarter of 2021 and work through until the first quarter of 2023.
The driller did not disclose dayrates for the work, saying the contract was well based with additional options. The two drill rigs are currently working on dayrates of $495,000 and $400,000 respectively. The work was disclosed by Diamond in April 2019. The first phase of Sangomar involves the drilling of 23 wells.
Updated 09:46 am with additional details on Woodside’s FID, MODEC’s FPSO work and Diamon Offshore.