Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo) has awarded a contract worth around US$1 billion to Saipem in a consortium with two Nigerian companies, for the Bonga North Deepwater Project in Nigeria.
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Italy’s Saipem will execute the contract with Nigeria’s KOA Oil $ Gas and AVEON Offshore, Offshore Energy magazine has reported.
As part of the contract with Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo), Saipem will deliver the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) of risers, flowlines, subsea umbilicals, and associated subsea structures for the Bonga North Project, located 130 kilometres offshore Nigeria.
Design and fabrication activities will be carried out locally, also involving Nigerian suppliers and subcontractors.
Saipem’s share as leader of a consortium with KOA Oil & Gas and AVEON Offshore is close to $900 million.
Last week, SNEPCo, a subsidiary of the UK-headquartered Shell, made a Final Investment Decision (FID) for a deepwater oil and gas project off the coast of Nigeria, which will be developed as a subsea tie-back to an existing floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) unit.
According to Shell, the project encompasses the drilling, completion, and start-up of 16 wells, of which half are production ones and the remaining half water injection wells, modifications to the existing FPSO Bonga Main, and the installation of new subsea hardware tied back to the unit for which Akselos provided a structural digital twin in 2020.
The following day TechnipFMC secured a contract with SNEPCo to supply Subsea 2.0 production systems for the Bonga North development offshore Nigeria.
Shell expects the project to sustain oil and gas production at the Bonga facility because of its estimated recoverable resource volume of over 300 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe).
The Bonga North project’s peak production is forecast to be 110,000 barrels of oil per day, with the first oil anticipated by the decade-end, it said.
SNEPCo (55 per cent) operates the Bonga field in partnership with Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (20 per cent), Nigerian Agip Exploration (12.5 per cent), and TotalEnergies Exploration and Production Nigeria (12.5 per cent), on behalf of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC).
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
