Agogo Oil Field

The Agogo oil field is a deepwater oil and gas field located in Block 15/06, offshore Angola,  in the southern part of the African continent.

The oil field was discovered in March 2019 with an initial prospect of up to 650 million barrels of light oil in place. Further appraisal of the field has indicated the presence of up to one billion barrels of oil in recoverable reserves.

The initial production from the field was started at a rate of 20,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) through a subsea tieback to a nearby floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility in January 2020. The field is expected to produce up to 20,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) in the production phase.

The project partners were expected to take a final investment decision for the full field development with a new production hub in 2021. The front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for the field expansion was also awarded in the first quarter of 2020.

Italian oil company Eni’s Angolan subsidiary is the operator of the field. Eni has a 36.84% participating interest in Angola’s offshore block 15/06, while the other partners are Sonangol P&P (36.84%) and SSI Fifteen (26.32%).

Location and reservoir details

The Agogo field is located in 1,700m-deep waters, approximately 180km off the coast of Agola. The current field development lies approximately 20km west of the N’Goma FPSO operating within the West Hub project in Eni-operated block 15/06. The Agogo reservoir comprises oil Lower Miocene sandstones in the sub-salt diapirs setting at a depth of more than 4km beneath the seabed.

Angola Offshore Block 15/06 exploration and development

The block 15/06 exploration continued from 2006 to 2011 that led to the development of two production hubs namely the East and the West hubs each with one FPSO. The West Hub FPSO is known as N’Goma, while the one for the East Hub is called Olombendo.

Brought on stream respectively in 2014 and 2017, the production hubs have been expanded further through additional discoveries in the area. The block 15/06 currently comprises a total of eight producing fields with a total of 42 subsea wells producing more than 160,000 barrels of oil per day. It produced a cumulative total of approximately 180 million barrels (Mbl) of oil by the end of 2019.

The other new discoveries made by the 15/06 block development partners include Kalimba, Afoxé, Ndungu, and Agidigbo.

Agogo oil field discovery and appraisal

The Agogo offshore oilfield was discovered by the Agogo-1 new field wildcat (NFW) well in March 2019. Drilled to a total depth of 4,450m, the Agogo-1 well encountered a single oil column of approximately 203m, including 120m of net pay of high-quality oil.

The first appraisal well Agogo-2 was drilled approximately 3km north-west of the Agogo-1 well in July 2019 that indicated approximately 650Mbl of light oil in place.

The drilling of the second appraisal well Agogo-2 approximately 1.5km north-west of the Agogo-2 was completed in February 2020. It increased the field’s total oil in place estimation to one billion barrel.

N’Goma FPSO

The Agogo field is tied-back to the N’Goma FPSO in the West Hub production area of the block 15/06. The FPSO is capable of processing approximately 100,000 barrels of oil and 115 million cubic feet (Mcf) of gas a day, while its water injection capacity is approximately 120,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Contractors

Saipem was contracted for the engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) of risers, production flowlines, jumpers, as well as the installation of a subsea production system (SPS) as part of the phase one development of the Agogo oilfield in February 2020.