A production and storage ship worth just under NOK 7 billion for the Agbami development off Nigeria has been ordered by operator ChevronTexaco from Daewoo Shipping and Maritime Engineering.
Statoil has an 18.85 per cent holding in this field, which extends across Nigerian blocks 216 and 217 and lies in 1,500 metres of water.
Agbami was proven in the first of these blocks by the former Texaco company in 1998, while Statoil is the operator for block 217.
A unitisation agreement was signed earlier this month by the licensees and the Nigerian government, and the latter also recently approved the field development plan.
Agbami will be brought on stream from subsea production facilities tied back to the new ship. Contracts for the seabed installations are due to be awarded during the spring.
“The field will produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day at start-up,” says Roald Riise, Statoil’s vice president for development and production in western Africa.
“It will provide us with around 45,000 daily barrels when plateau production has been reached.”
With recoverable reserves put at roughly 800 million barrels of oil, Agbami is scheduled to come on stream in the first quarter of 2008.