$3.3bn Egina FPSO Departs LADOL for Offshore Oil field After Integration

ABIOLA seun |

After seven months of fabrication and integration of modules, the $3.3bn Total Egina Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) has finally departed the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics (LADOL) base to the Egina deep-water oilfield.

The Egina FPSO, which was built for Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, (TUPNI) by Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI), sailed away from the quay side at Samsung Yard in Geoje, South Korea, on October 31, 2017, arrived Nigeria on January 24th 2018 before sailing away to the oilfield yesterday.

It was gathered that the FPSO is the largest (330-metres long) ever installed in Nigeria with 200,000 barrels of oil per day left the newly built 500-metre FPSO integration quayside at the SHI-MCI Yard, LADOL Island Lagos, where the integration of six locally fabricated modules took place.

Recall that Egina is the first in Nigeria and Africa. The integration of the six locally fabricated topside modules at the SHI-MCI Yard before its final sail-away to the Egina field is said to be a game changer as far as the execution of deep offshore oil and gas projects in the country is concerned.

The FPSO was designed for 25 years of operations and in addition to producing 200,000 barrels of oil per day (at plateau), the integration generation significant activities for local contractors in various sectors and avenues for the training and development of Nigerians in various domains.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Managing Director in charge of Deep Water at Total Exploration and Production Nigeria, Mr. Ahmadu-Kida Musa had explained that 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, will sail away to Egina field, located in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130, approximately 150 kilometres offshore, Port Harcourt.

According to him, the field is expected to begin producing 200,000 bpd of oil from the field.

“Egina is the latest of Total’s deep-water 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 is currently moored for topsides integration works,” said Musa.

He added: “It is the deepest offshore development carried out so far in Nigeria, in water depths of over 1,500 metres and the project is designed to produce 200,000 barrels per day of oil at plateau.

“In addition to the oil, the Egina field will produce gas. Associated gas will be partly re-injected into the reservoir to maintain reservoir pressure, and partly channelled to supply the domestic gas market.”

He explained that Nigeria was proud Egina has advanced its local content policy to new levels in many domains, adding that it, amongst others, led to the development of a new fabrication and integration yard which is reportedly Africa’s first FPSO integration quay.

“It was, constructed under the FPSO package contract by SHI-MCI, within Lagos deep offshore logistics base on LADOL Island. Today, the Egina project is proudly the first to record the fabrication and integration of FPSO topsides in Nigeria. Six of the 18 topside modules were fabricated and integrated at the SHI-MCI facility at LADOL.”