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 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday, July 23, 2004.
Shell’s Bonga
field to produce 150mscf of gas daily
By Charles Okonji
Senior
Business Correspondent, Lagos
Shell Nigeria
Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCO) has said that Bonga
oil field can currently produce about 150 million standard cubic feet per
day (scf/d) of gas.
The Bonga Control Manager, Mr.
Gbola Sogande, while listing the field’s achievements, said the it would
record no gas flaring, as SNEPCO had taken adequate measure to bring the
best technology that would enhance proper utilisation of gas in the oil
field.
Sogande said the company had
carried out the installatin, hook-up and pre-commissioning of the 86
kilometres Bonga gas export pipeline, which included the first steel
catenary riser ever to be installed on a Floating Production, Storage and
Offloading (FPSO) vessel.
The Bonga control manager, who
also disclosed that SNEPCO had spent about $2.2 billion for the
development of the field, stated that one of the major achievements of
Bonga was the local content.
He said that though SNEPCO had
targeted 1.3 million man-hours local content, about 2.1 million man-hours
would be achieved, stressing that the strategy adopted included a
baseline survey to establish the capacity of the Nigerian industry to
support the deepwater offshore industry.
Among other achievements of
the field are the 16 wells, which were drilled in the phased pre-first
oil wells of the field, while the company had also carried out
productivity tests on four other wells, which had proved successful. The
efforts had resulted in an additional 110 million barrels of recoverable
oil reserves.
Single Point
Mooring (SPM) buoy for the
fields was fabricated in Nigeria, while the flowlines double jointing
work was also done at the Nigerdock yard. The SPM is said to be 23 metres
in diametre, 12 metres in height and weighs 870 tonnes.
Sogande said: “A significant
contribution from the project has been the revitalisation during 2003 of
Nigerdock, a shipbuilding and oil and gas fabrication yard that was
almost moribund.
“The project has helped to
avoid the prospects of shutdown of the facility by ensuring that the
Single Point Mooring buoy, as well as flowlines double joining work, was
performed in that yard rather than overseas.
“The project team has
established its offices there and it has become an effective offshore
support base, with office and residential accommodation, as well as a
helipad, to support the operations of two project super puma helicopters
and a search and rescue boat,” he added.
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