The French multinational oil and gas company, Total, on Wednesday said it had started production from the giant Egina Oilfield located 1,600 metres of water depths, 150 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria.
Arnaud Breuillac, the President, Exploration and Production, Total, said that the Egina Field would produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day, which represents around 10 per cent of Nigeria’s production.
Breuillac said, in a statement in Lagos, that the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit used to develop the field was the largest built by Total.
According to him, six of the 18 modules on the FPSO were built and integrated locally, while 77 per cent of hours spent on the project were worked locally.
He said that startup had been achieved close to 10 per cent below the initial budget, representing more than one billion dollars of capital expenditure savings.
Breuillac said that it was due to drilling performance where the drilling time per well had been reduced by 30 per cent.
“Egina will significantly boost the group’s production and cash flow from 2019 onwards.
“It will benefit from our strong cost reduction efforts in Nigeria where we have reduced our operating costs by 40 per cent over the last four years,” he said.
Initially discovered in 2003, the Egina Oil Field is the second development in production on the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130.
Total Upstream Nigeria Ltd operates OML 130 with a 24 per cent interest, in partnership with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and South Atlantic Petroleum- SAPETRO Ltd. (NAN)