By Our Correspondent
Nigeria’s 200,000 barrels a day Egina Deepwater field, is set to begin operations as the $3.3 billion Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) unit of the oilfield, leaves the LADOL yard today.
The FPSO which arrived in Nigeria in January this year from South Korea, was completed at the LADOL facility in Lagos, but the sail away had been delayed following what Oriental News Nigeria learnt was caused by unsettled financial deal.
However, Oriental News Nigeria authoritatively gathered that the sail away ceremony was stalled on Friday due to administrative bottlenecks.
It was also learnt that uncertainties around weather conditions contributed to inability of the vessel to sail.
Though it is yet not clear why the sail away which was billed to attract national attention and possibly flagged off by the Vice President is being done secretly.
A highly competent industry source who confided in us said unsettled financial transactions had led to detention of the vessel.
But both LADOL and Samsung Heavy Industries officials could not confirm these claims.
The FPSO, which had the detailed engineering of its topsides executed in-country after it arrived from South Korea by Samsung with a consortium of Nigerian engineering companies, had been scheduled to sail away to Egina field, located in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130, approximately 150 kilometres offshore Port Harcourt, where it is expected to commence operations by Q4, 2018.
It is expected to begin producing 200,000 barrels daily of oil from the field and this would account for 10 per cent of Nigeria’s total oil production when finally in operation.
Oriental News Nigeria reports that Egina is the latest of Total’s deepwater developments and the third project of its kind developed by Total in Nigeria, after Akpo and Usan.
These projects have brought progressive increase in levels of Nigerian Content and this is well illustrated by the percentage of total project workload performed in Nigeria: from 44 per cent for Usan, Total recorded 60 per cent for Akpo and now 77 per cent will be achieved for Egina just before the FPSO sails away from the SHI-MCI Yard in LADOL Island, Lagos where it was moored for topsides integration works.
The Egina field will produce gas and the associated gas will be partly re-injected into the reservoir to maintain reservoir pressure, and partly channelled to supply the domestic gas market.