Oil and Gas Industrial Watchers are still keen towards the long awaited Final Investment Decision (FID) on the prolific Preowei field expected in early 2019. French oil gaint Total is considering Preowei discovery tie-back to the Egina FPSO design and the competitive bidding process to select a subsea contractor for its deep-water project which is expected to produce around 70,000boepd at peak has been since stalled.

Major renowned subsea companies have been jostled for the Total Preowei integrated subsea solution among these global subsea giants for this keenly design contest are Texas based multinational McDermott-BHGE (Baker Hughes), Italian oil and gas industry contractor Saipem-Aker, Schlumberger company headquartered in Houston, Texas Subsea 7-OneSubsea and U.K based TechnipFMC.

 These companies are believed to possess the technical ingenuity and know-how to execute such enormous project owing to their individual previous records and achievements to similar projects in the oil and gas global scene. But one important and singular factor determines the winner.

A source disclosed to Upstream intelligence that TechnipFMC could jump straight to the head of the contractor queue for an integrated subsea order because of the ready availability of about seven FMC trees “which are sitting on the beach” in Nigeria.

“If you have the trees and load them with profit,” suggested this market watcher, “you can almost give away the SURF for free, so the others cannot compete,” The source posited.

The oil giant has been lukewarm towards the commencement of this all important economic project that will invariably spurt the dwindling crude oil production of the mono economic country Nigeria.  According to a source, there has been no formal contact with the major contractors but a pre-qualification exercise has been expected since early 2019. The present global crude oil market and prevailing crononavirus pandemic are of negative economic indices for any major project start up in energy sector.

Total commenced crude oil production from Egina Field on December 29, 2018. Egina field crude oil was drilled to about 1,600 meters of water depths, and located 150 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria. At peak, the Egina field is expected to produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day, representing about 10 per cent of Nigeria’s daily crude oil production.

 Initially discovered in 2003, the Egina field is the second development in production on the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130 following the Akpo field, which started-up in 2009. The Preowei field is another large discovery made on this prolific block for which an investment decision is scheduled for 2019.

In addition, the successful contractor on Preowei subsea project is expected to supply an integrated subsea system for the Egina South project, located 20 kilometres from Egina. Development of Preowei was being considered in 2007 as the base case called for 30 development wells tied back to Egina, some 25 kilometres away.

Total initiated moves on possible commencement of producing Preowei in December 2017 when, after drilling Preowei-3, it reported an addition of approximately 80 to 100 Million barrels of oil (MMbo) to the full field contingent recoverable resources, bringing them to 140 to 200MMbo.

The Preowei-3 well, drilled to a final depth of 3,235 meters, encountered approximately 50 metres net of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs, in line with expectations. The well confirmed previous results from the Preowei-1B and Preowei-2 wells, which encountered approximately 55 metres of oil-bearing sandstone reservoir.

The Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit used to develop the giant Egina field is the largest one Total has ever built. This project has also involved a record level of local contractors. Six of the eighteen modules on the FPSO were built and integrated locally, and 77% of hours spent on the project were worked locally.