Senegal is about to ink the West African country among the league of top crude producer as the back nation African country receives her maiden FPSO vessel for offshore operations in Sangomar Oilfield.  In its recent media release, Woodside Energy said that the has achieved another significant step forward for the Sangomar Project with the sail away from Singapore of the Léopold Sédar Senghor Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility.

The FPSO, named after Senegal’s first president, is travelling 12,000 nautical miles from Singapore to its final destination, approximately 100 kilometres offshore Dakar, Senegal. The Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill in a statement highlighted the significance of the Sangomar Field Development Phase 1 and praised the level of collaboration among multiple participants that made the successful sail away possible.

 “We are targeting first oil from Sangomar in mid-2024. The FPSO sail away reaffirms Woodside’s commitment to Senegal and its future development and prosperity. “Sangomar is Senegal’s first offshore oil development and we remain committed to working with the Government of Senegal and local communities to ensure that the benefits from our investments are felt broadly across the country.

“The successful and safe departure of the FPSO could not have been achieved without our strong relationship with PETROSEN and our contractors MODEC and Seatrium. Achieving this milestone having achieved 21 million exposure hours work on the FPSO without a lost time injury is an outstanding result and a credit to the contractor teams,” she said.

 The Sangomar Field Development Phase 1 includes a stand-alone FPSO with subsea infrastructure and an expected production capacity of approximately 100,000 barrels/day, 130 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, 145,000 barrels of water injection per day and will have minimum storage capacity of 1,300,000 barrels of crude oil.

. The FPSO was previously a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) and was converted by MODEC into a fit for purpose FPSO suitable for the Sangomar Field in accordance with agreed specifications under an FPSO purchase contract entered into by MODEC and Woodside. MODEC was awarded a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) contract of the FPSO in February 2019 and has now been awarded the FPSO purchase contract further to Final Investment Decision (FID) on the Sangomar Field Development which was made in January 2020.