Page 8 - AfrOil Week 45 2019

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil
Total’s South African subsidiary reports on work at Brulpadda field
SOUTH AFRICA
A representative of Total’s South African subsid- iary said last week that his company was making progress at Brulpadda, an offshore field within Block 11B/12B. The French company discov- ered sizeable amounts of hydrocarbons there last year and has estimated the field’s reserves at 1bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of natural gas and condensate.
Speaking at the Africa Oil Week confer- ence in Cape Town, Adewale Fayemi, the managing director of Total E&P South Africa, described Brulpadda as a “ground-breaking and world-class” find. The field’s reserves have been proven, and the project has been largely de-risked, he said.
Even so, he commented, the company is still looking for gas. Next month, he said, it will begin collecting 2D and 3D seismic data from other sections of Brulpadda. This information will help determine whether the field holds additional prospects, he stated. Total E&P South Africa intends to begin drilling work at other prospective sites within the Padavissie fan system, which is part of the Outeniqua Basin in the first quarter of 2020, he added.
Fayemi stressed that his company had racked up many successes at Brulpadda. For
example, he said, the company drilled the Brulpadda-1AX re-entry well at the field more quickly than anticipated – that is, in just 61 days. This is all the more remarkable, he said, given the harsh weather conditions at Brulpadda, which lies 175km from South Africa’s coast.
Total E&P South Africa began drilling work at the field in 2014 but had to stop after its equipment was damaged by strong winds and swift currents, Fayemi said. Since then, he reported, the company has re-engineered systems, installed new equipment and over- hauled sections of the rig it is using to develop Brulpadda.
It has, for example, designed and introduced a system capable of keeping much of the rig’s equipment out of the water, he said. “If it’s above water, you are able to care for it, maintain it, inspect it and prevent failure as far as possible,” he commented.
Meanwhile, he said, the company has installed a high-frequency radar system to monitor ambient weather conditions and ocean currents. It has also revised its plans for reduc- ing the rig’s exposure to inclement weather, thereby helping employees maximise the oper- ability of the drilling platform.™
Uganda tests tertiary recovery methods
SOUTH AFRICA
THE Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) has launched a pilot programme that involves using tertiary recovery methods to increase yields at crude oil deposits.
Bob Felix Ocitti, a senior petroleum geo- scientist at PAU, said earlier this week that his agency was testing polymer flooding and other methods in a laboratory setting. Officials in Kampala hope that these tests will help deter- mine whether investors can ensure that Ugan- dan fields yield all 1.4bn barrels of the oil that has been classified as recoverable reserves, he said during a visit to the Lake Albert region.
“There are other tertiary methods such as polymer flooding that will help us produce even more than what we currently have [estimated] as 1.4bn barrels. We have done some labora- tory tests based on that methodology,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Monitor.
Eventually, Ocitti added, PAU intends to test tertiary recovery methods such as poly- mer flooding at oil-bearing sites in the Lake Albert region. The agency will work with the
companies that have development licences for the country’s oilfields before they begin com- mercial production, he said.
“That is why we have planned as government together with the operators to do a pilot test of polymer flooding,” he explained. “Already we have done the laboratory tests, [and] they look promising. But for you to make a full-field deployment, you must have attained a success- ful pilot project.”
He did not say when PAU and its partners expected to begin field testing.
Export rumours
Ocitti also commented on long-standing rumours that Uganda’s national oil company (NOC) was exporting crude oil extracted from Lake Albert fields during test production pro- grammes to Kenya.
He dismissed these reports, saying that all 45,000 barrels of the crude gathered from wells in the Hoima and Buliisa districts since 2012 were still in storage.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 45 13•November•2019