After Girassol and Dalia and the subsea tie-back Rosa, the launch of Pazflor represents a major new stage in the development of Block 17. StatoilHydro has a 23.33% interest in the block.
Located about 150 kilometres off the coast of Angola and 40 kilometres north-east of Dalia in depths of 600 to 1,200 metres, the Pazflor development involves bringing four fields into production: Perpetua, Hortensia and Zinia (Upper Miocene), and Acacia (Oligocene), which were discovered between mid 2000 and early 2003.
The overall development programme uses the techniques well-tried on Girassol and Dalia. A floating processing, storage and offloading unit (FPSO) for Pazflor production will receive oil and natural gas from 49 subsea wells (25 producers, 22 water injectors and two natural gas injectors).
The FPSO will have a processing capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil per day and can store two million barrels, bringing the installed production capacity on block 17 to over 700,000 barrels per day.
The Pazflor development is scheduled to start production in 2011.
Total E&P Angola is the operator (40%). Esso Exploration Angola (Block 17) Limited (20%), BP Exploration (Angola) Ltd (16.67%) and StatoilHydro (23.33%) are partners.