Egina Oil Field, Nigeria

The Egina oil field is located 150km off the coast of Nigeria. The field is being developed by Total Upstream Nigeria (24%) in partnership with NNPC (10%), CNOOC (45%), Sapetro (5%) and Petrobras (16%). Egina is the third deep offshore development of Total in Nigeria. The field is currently under development and the production is scheduled to begin by 2014/2015.

Located about 20km away from Akpo field, Egina field lies within the block Oil Mining Lease OML 130 and covers an area of around 500 square miles. It is situated at a water depth of up to 1,750m.

Discovery

The field was discovered in December 2003 when the Egina-1 well was drilled. Following the discovery, the appraisal well Egina-2 was drilled in October 2004. The appraisal programme and seismic data processing resulted in the Egina-3 well drilling in September 2006, which occurred at a water depth of approximately 1,500m. Following this, Egina-4 was drilled in November 2006 and Egina-5 was drilled in January 2007.

Oil reserves

The five wells on Egina field encountered 60 to 80m of oil in Miocene sands. The oil reserves are estimated at 550 million barrels. The light oil is rated at 28° API.

Egina field development

The Egina field was initially planned to be developed as a subsea tieback to the Akpo floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO). Major discoveries in the area, however, lead to the stand alone development of Egina.

Basic engineering studies of the field were begun in 2008. The development plan was approved by the Nigerian authorities in 2009.

Pre-qualification tenders were invited for the engineering, procurement, construction and supply of essential generators packages. These packages will be integrated on a FPSO unit. The FPSO development project involves the design, procurement, construction, hook-up, pre-commissioning, transportation and commissioning of the FPSO hull and topsides.

The first comprehensive front end engineering design (FEED) was completed in July 2010 and carried out by J P Kenny and MCS Kenny.

Egina field infrastructure

Egina field infrastructure includes an FPSO unit, an oil offloading terminal and subsea production systems such as risers, flowlines, umbilicals and subsea manifolds.

Total began the development of a new FPSO for the project. The FPSO will measure approximately 330m in length, 61m in width and 33.5m in depth, and is expected to have an oil storage capacity of approximately two million barrels. The FPSO will have topsides modules with a gross dry weight of 34,000t.

Contracts

In July 2009, Total awarded a FEED contract to Dover Engineering. Dover signed an agreement with J P Kenny and MCS Kenny to facilitate project delivery.

The contract provides scope for the comprehensive design studies and engineering assessments, development of specifications, documentation and technology studies, and design of the umbilicals, flowlines, risers and the subsea production systems used in the field development.

Total has signed a major contract with Abbott Risk Consulting (ARC) in 2008 for safety engineering design studies on the Egina FPSO project.  Under the contract, ARC is responsible for conducting fire risk analysis, explosion modelling, gas dispersion modelling and quantitative risk assessment. ARC will also carry out a range of other studies to conclude a number of design options.

The engineering, procurement and construction contract of the Egina turbo-compressors is expected to be awarded between late 2010 and early 2011. The packages will be delivered to the FPSO fabrication site within two years of the contractual award.

Production

The Egina field is expected to come onstream by the end of 2014 or early 2015. The production from the Egina-5 well is estimated to reach 12,000 barrels per day.

The oil field is estimated to reach a peak production rate of 150,000 barrels per day, while the new FPSO will have a production capacity of 200,000 barrels per day.