VAALCO Energy Inc. provided an update on its operations offshore Gabon.
The Houston independent said production from the Etame Marin block has resumed after the successful completion of previously announced maintenance work on the company’s leased floating production, storage, and offloading vessel. Work was performed to upgrade the FPSO’s fire and gas detection systems as well as other routine maintenance. To facilitate this work, production from the block was shut in starting Aug. 23.
The platform jackets for both of the two new production platforms for the additional development of the Etame Marin block are now in place with this week’s setting of the second platform jacket adjacent to the Southeast Etame and North Tchibala fields, the company said. Leg piles for the Southeast Etame-North Tchibala platform are currently being installed to secure the jacket to the seabed. The two production platforms are each in 80 m of water.
The deck sections of both platforms are currently being towed to Gabon with arrival expected in early September. The deck sections are currently offshore Brazil about 2,000 nautical miles west of their final destination offshore Gabon.
The deck sections are expected to be mated with the jacket sections later in September and the drilling of the first development well from the Etame field platform is scheduled to commence in mid-October, subject to platform readiness and the arrival of the contracted Transocean’s Constellation II jack up rig.
Earlier this year, VAALCO deemed its Dimba exploration well drilled in the Dimba prospect about 7 miles northeast of Etame field, to be uneconomic (OGJ Online, Feb. 28, 2014).
