Page 11 - AfrOil Week 49 2021

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil

Arkab led a delegation along with the presidents
of Sonatrach and the Hydrocarbons Regulatory
Authority and local officials to investigate the
causes of the outbreak.
Skikda, which has a throughput capacity of
330,000 barrels per day (bpd), is located around
500 km east of the capital Algiers and is the
country’s largest refinery.
The refinery fire did not affect Sonatrach’s
nearby Skikda LNG facility, which was forced to
shut down in early June following the identifica-
tion of a technical fault. That 4mn tonne per year
(tpy) had to remain offline until July 30 while it The Skikda refinery can process 330,000 bpd of oil (Photo: Incendia Consulting)
carried out maintenance. Sonatrach said at the
time that this problem was the result of “a sud- an incident caused damage to a turbine.
den failure of a gas turbine control mechanism.” The company operates a total liquefaction
The plant had undergone extensive mainte- slate of 24.7mn tpy across four facilities, three of
nance during the first half of 2020, during which which are located at Arzew. ™

IHS Markit: Jove Marine drilling could

confirm Gabon’s pre-salt potential

GABON THE outcome of an ongoing drilling project at
the Jove Marine section of Block F13 offshore
Gabon could provide further confirmation of
the potential of pre-salt areas within the deepwa-
ter sections of the Lower Congo basin, accord-
ing to a note from IHS Markit.
The London-based information provider
noted on December 1 that Malaysia’s Petronas,
the operator of Block F13, was moving ahead
with the drilling of an exploration well that will
test a four-way dip closure in the pre-salt Gamba
and Dentale formations of the basin’s distal por-
tion. Petronas spudded the Jove Marine well in
early November and is expected to finish drilling
in the first half of January.
According to other sources, the Malaysian
company’s PC Gabon Upstream subsidiary has
contracted the Maersk Viking, a drillship owned
by Maersk Drilling (Denmark), to sink the well
at a site located in 2,100-metre-deep water. The
contract is valued at $24mn, a sum that includes
both mobilisation and demobilisation costs.
Petronas has indicated that Jove Marine will Block F13 was included in the 11th Bidding Round (Image: Government of Gabon)
be economical to develop if it contains at least
150mn barrels of oil in recoverable reserves, mid-2018, the information provider said. It also
provided that world crude prices average $70 noted that Petronas had identified nine pros-
per barrel. It has also said that a discovery in the pects that might hold as much as 8.7bn barrels
new well would serve to confirm the potential of of oil equivalent (boe) at Block F13.
pre-salt fields in deepwater sections of the Lower IHS Markit was not the only observer to
Congo basin. highlight the upside of the Malaysian company’s
According to IHS Markit, the likelihood efforts in the Gabonese offshore zone. Douglas
of encountering oil-mature source rock has Rycroft, director at the Edinburgh-based con-
increased since the discovery of crude reserves sultancy Gneiss Energy, described Petronas’
at Ivela, one of the fields within the neighbour- work as “a sign of recovery in the African explo-
ing Block E13. Repsol (Spain) and its partner ration space, where a number of key wells are
Woodside Energy (Australia) found oil there in now underway.”

Week 49 08•December•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P11