Page 5 - AfrOil Week 49 2019

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil
 As of July 2019, the country was producing about 18,000 bpd.
Savannah’s assets
Savannah entered Niger after CNPC started extracting oil there, acquiring licences for the R1 and R2 blocks in July 2014 and for the R3 and R4 blocks in July 2015. These four blocks cover about 50% of the Agadem Rift Basin, Ross told NewsBase.
The UK company was aware of the Agadem Rift Basin’s potential, but needed more infor- mation, so it launched an extensive explora- tion programme. In 2014 and 2015, it collected 36,948km of data in an airborne full-tensor gravity (FTG) survey. Then in 2016, it gathered 806 square km of 3D seismic data from the eastern section of the R3 block. This informa- tion allowed it to select drilling sites and initiate an exploration drilling campaign. In 2018, the company drilled five wells – Amdigh, Bushiya, Eridal, Kunama and Zomo – and discovered oil at all of them. It has now drawn up plans for establishing an early production solution (EPS) programme at R3 East and has submitted a feasibility study to Niger’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. The study initially provides for sending produced barrels through the existing domestic pipeline to the Zinder refinery, both of which have spare capacity, Ross noted.
So far, Ross added, Savannah has spent over $100mn on exploration work in Niger. But its work is not finished yet. The company plans to drill additional wells and assess its options for optimising production, exports and local pro- cessing. It has already mapped 146 potential drilling targets within blocks R1, R2, R3 and R4, and it fully expects to find more oil.
Its optimism stems not just from its own success to date, but also the wider basin’s pro- lific success rate. Since 2008, CNPC has made 110 discoveries from 137 exploration wells, an 80% success rate. According to an independent
reserve audit conducted by the UK consultancy CGG Robertson, Savannah’s licence areas are estimated to contain approximately 2.8bn bar- rels of “yet-to-find” risked prospective reserves.
According to Ross, Savannah’s first priority is to push forward at R3 East. “The focus, as far as going forward, is two-fold,” she said. “One, we need to test these discoveries and then bring them into production [through the] early pro- duction system ... The second project is further exploration drilling. We expect both of these projects to kick off in 2020.”
Pipeline plans
As noted above, Savannah intends to send some of its production to market by pipeline. The company will move towards this goal in steps.
The first step will involve using trucks to handle about 1,500 bpd of production during initial well testing operations. These barrels will be transported from temporary processing facilities on the surface to the Goumeri/Jaouro export station, which is about 120km away by road. They will then be loaded into CNPC’s existing Agadem-Zinder pipeline for delivery to the Zinder refinery.
The second step will see Savannah con- structing a central processing facility (CPF) at Amdigh. The CPF will be connected to a gath- ering system that brings oil from the other four fields to a central location for transfer into a 90-km overland pipeline to the Goumeri/Jaouro export station, expected to see output levels of up to 5,000 bpd or more. As with production from initial testing operations, these barrels will be sent to the Zinder refinery.
Ross explained: “For our initial discoveries, we have agreed with the government that we will use the spare capacity in the existing domestic infrastructure, which amounts to around 5,000- 7,000 bpd. We have been talking about produc- tion of up to 5,000 bpd. The government is very supportive of that.”
“ priority is to push
forward at the R3 East licence area
Savannah’s first
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Agadem Rift Basin in Niger (Image: Savannah Petroleum)
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