BW Energy said Monday it had fulfilled the first oil delivery from the Hibiscus/Ruche field, in the first phase of the project offshore Gabon.
“Production performance from the first well has been in line with expectations and is currently stabilized at approximately 6,000 barrels per day”, the Oslo-headquartered company said in a press release.
BW Energy announced the delivery a week after it said drilling had been completed for DHIBM-3H, the first production well of phase one of the Hibiscus/Ruche project.
The well has been drilled to a depth of 12,739.5 feet (3,883 meters) in the Gamba sandstone reservoir. Output goes to the BW Adolo FPSO facility for processing and storage before offloading onto oil tankers, said the company.
BW Energy announced the first oil discovery in the well in 2021.
“The Hibiscus / Ruche Phase 1 drilling campaign targets four Hibiscus Gamba and two Ruche Gamba wells which are expected to add approximately 30,000 barrels per day of total oil production when all wells are completed in early 2024”, the company said.
The Hibiscus/Ruche field project aims to drill 12 wells in total to “exploit the prolific Gamba reservoir”, BW Energy says on its website. The development can recover, as stated on Bwenergy.no, 47.9 million barrels based on third-party-estimates.
The field is being developed under the company’s license for the Dussafu block, which also includes the Tortue field. BW Energy says it owns 73.5 percent of the assets under the Dussafu permit while Panoro Energy holds 17.5 percent and Gabon Oil Co. nine percent.
Cash from the Tortue project is expected to fund approximately $393 million in investments into the Hibiscus/Ruche development, according to the website. BW Energy’s gross production in the Tortue field totaled 883,000 barrels of oil in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the company’s full-year results published February 28.
Chief executive Carl K Arnet said the delivery “represents the first of several steps on a path for successive production growth in Gabon as we complete the drilling program and asset upgrades through 2023 and into early 2024”.
“Our priority now is to complete start-up activities and stabilize production from the DHIBM-3H well. In parallel, work progresses towards start-up of the new gas lift compressor to support production from the existing six Tortue wells while also moving ahead with drilling of the next Hibiscus / Ruche production wells as planned”, he added.
In its earnings report, BW Energy projected its production from Dussafu would stand between eight and 10 million gross barrels this year.
It said in the report its solid capital borrowings will “initially fund accretive investments in the Dussafu license offshore Gabon”.
Besides its expansion in Gabon through Hibiscus/Ruche, Arnet said in the results update BW Energy was “moving towards completion of the acquisitions of the Golfinho and Camarupim Clusters in Brazil, which will add further production and access to low-risk development opportunities”.
The company, part of BW Group, also has projects in Namibia, where it recently entered a power purchase agreement with local company NamPower Corp. The deal was signed February between BW Group subsidiary BW Kudu Ltd and the Namibian grid supplier, according to the earnings report.
