As oil flows from one well, another will follow suit shortly while Noble rig embarks on next job off Africa

UK-based oil and gas player Trident Energy has brought online its first infill well on Block G off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, drilled with a drillship owned by the U.S.-headquartered Noble Corporation. The second well in the company’s infill program is slated to come on stream soon. The rig is scheduled to move to its next assignment off the coast of Africa.

After the infill drilling program was delayed in February 2024, when the contract for the Island Innovator rig was terminated due to alleged safety concerns, Trident Energy sealed a deal with Noble Corporation in April 2024 to restart its drilling campaign offshore Equatorial Guinea with the Noble Venturer drillship.

Once the rig arrived at Luba port, Bioko Island, at the start of summer 2024, the two-well infill drilling activities at the Ceiba and Okume Complex fields began soon afterward in shallow and deep waters of the Rio Muni basin. Given the limitations arising from the shallower water depth at one of the planned infill well locations, the third infill well was deferred as part of a potential future drilling campaign. 

After the primary and secondary reservoirs met expectations, the first well was scheduled to be in production mode in early September, followed by the second in October 2024. According to Trident, the C-45 infill well came online on October 15 and currently has a rate of more than 5,000 barrels per day, aligned with the firm’s pre-drill expectations.

Julien Vuillemet, General Manager of Trident Energy Equatorial Guinea, commented: “We are pleased to have safely and successfully delivered the C-45 subsea infill well, a first for Trident Energy. This represents an important step towards our plan of unlocking further value from mid-life assets, a key component in our organic growth plan for Equatorial Guinea.”

Furthermore, the production ramp-up is anticipated to continue to enable the well to reach its full potential. The C-45 was the first of two infill wells at the producing Ceiba field and the Okume complex. The well was drilled in 800 m water depth to a total depth of 3,148 m, encountering 142 m of high quality, oil-saturated, reservoir sands in an un-swept zone of the Ceiba field.

The second well, OF-19, in the Okume Complex, has been drilled in a water depth of 450 m to a depth of 2,195 m and is anticipated to be online shortly. According to Trident, both wells are a product of extensive field studies, seismic surveys, and simulations conducted by multi-disciplinary teams to identify and evaluate areas of undrained oil.

The company is convinced that these results demonstrate its technical capabilities to identify opportunities, deliver a deep water well drilling campaign, and extract value from mid-life assets. Trident Energy, the operator of Block G, holds a 40% participating interest while other joint venture partners are Panoro, Kosmos Energy, and GEPetrol.

Once activities conclude at the OF-19 infill well, the Noble Venturer drillship will move to drill the Kosmos Energy-operated Akeng Deep infrastructure-led exploration (ILX) well in Block S, where Trident Energy holds a 34% participating interest.

Panoro, which holds 12% interest in Block S, explains that the Akeng Deep ILX well is intended to test a play in the Albian, targeting an estimated gross mean resource of 180 million barrels of oil close to existing infrastructure at Block G.

John Hamilton, CEO of Panoro, highlighted: “We are pleased to have safely and successfully delivered the C-45 infill well which represents an important step forward towards the joint-venture partners organic production growth plans for Block G, and also moves Panoro a step closer towards targeted group production of 13,000 bopd when all wells in our current Equatorial Guinea and Gabon drilling campaigns are onstream.

“With the high-impact Akeng Deep ILX well at Block S due to follow the infill drilling campaign, a successful outcome can also have a positive read across to the adjacent Panoro operated Block EG-01 where we are progressing subsurface studies.”