Page 14 - AfrOil Week 14 2022

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil

BW Offshore briefly extends

contract for Espoir Ivorien FPSO

CÔTE D’IVOIRE BW Offshore (Norway) has arranged to extend incident led BW Offshore to shut in production
the term of its current contract for the Espoir until the following October.
Ivorien – a floating production, storage and BW Offshore operates the Espoir Ivorien
off-loading (FPSO) vessel anchored at the FPSO on behalf of CNR International, the oper-
Espoir field offshore Côte d’Ivoire – for a brief ator of the Espoir oilfield. Other shareholders in
period, in order to prepare for a much longer the Espoir project are Tullow Oil (UK/Ireland)
extension. and Petroci, the national oil company (NOC) of
The Norwegian company announced its Côte d’Ivoire. ™
plans in a statement dated April 5, saying that
it had struck an agreement with US-based CNR
International on pushing the end date of its con-
tract back from April 4, 2022, to May 15, 2022. It
explained that it intended to use the extra time to
“finalise terms for a further contract extension.”
BW Offshore did not specify the length of the
extension it was pursuing. However, Offshore
Engineer reported that the extension options
available to the company might keep the FPSO
moored offshore Côte d’Ivoire until 2036 at the
latest.
The Espoir Ivorien FPSO, built on the
framework of a converted Suezmax oil tanker,
was installed at the Espoir oilfield in 2002. It is
capable of handling 45,000 barrels per day (bpd)
of crude and 80mn cubic feet (2.266mn cubic
metres) per day of gas, and it can store about
1.1mn barrels of oil.
The vessel was the site of a fatal accident in
January 2021. Two workers aboard the FPSO
died when hydrocarbons leaked into a cargo
tank. The leak was quickly contained, but the The Espoir Ivorien FPSO was installed in 2002 (Photo: BW Offshore)

Dangote Group confident about

oil refinery’s completion date

NIGERIA NIGERIA’S Dangote Group this week reiterated During a site tour, Edwin said: “75% hydrau-
its intention to begin operations at its greenfield, lic testing ... as well as 70% of electrical cable
650,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery at Lekki fitting have been completed preparatory to the
outside Lagos. completion of the refinery in the fourth quar-
Reiterating expectations voiced by the com- ter of this year.” He added that the $19bn facility
pany’s CEO earlier this year that refining would would have a storage capacity of 4.7bn litres.
begin duringthe third quarter of 2022 Devaku- Edwin also noted that around 40% of the
mar Edwin, group executive for strategy, capi- refinery’s output would be available for export,
tal projects and portfolio development, said it with the majority to be dedicated to the local
would be operational by the fourth quarter, not- market.
ing that the facility would achieve completion CEO Aliko Dangote had said in February
by the end of 2022 too, ahead of the previous that the unit would come on stream in Septem-
schedule of early 2023. ber 2022 at an initial capacity of 540,000 bpd.

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