Island Drilling rig begins multi-well plug and abandonment work in Africa

Norwegian offshore rig operator Island Drilling Company has made a start on its plug and abandonment (P&A) campaign off the coast of Mauritania, Africa, which is being carried out with its 2012-built semi-submersible rig.

Island Drilling’s Island Innovator rig has embarked on its 2024 abandonment campaign with Tullow Oil in Mauritania. This is the rig’s first assignment since its infill drilling campaign on Block G offshore Equatorial Guinea was terminated in February 2024. The firm intended to explore options to contest the termination.

The 2012-built semi-submersible won a contract extension with Petrofac in January 2023 for the plug and abandonment operations offshore Mauritania. The extension followed the contract from December 2021, which was secured with Maersk Decom before Petrofac assumed responsibility for the subsea well decommissioning scope.

The Island Innovator rig is in charge of performing plugging and abandonment of four firm wells in the Tullow Oil-operated Banda and Tiof fields offshore Mauritania, with the scope of work encompassing the abandonment of suspended subsea exploration and appraisal wells, as well as various seabed cleanup activities.

Located approximately 53 km and 84 km offshore Nouakchott, the Banda and Tiof fields are two oil and gas accumulations in water depths ranging from 200 to 1,200 m. The rig owner estimates that the P&A work will take 75 days. The rig started this job on August 16, 2024.

Roger Simmenes, CEO of Island Drilling, commented: “We are thrilled to continue our relationship with Tullow in Mauritania and look forward to a successful completion of the plugging and abandonment work in the Banda and Tiof fields.”

The Island Innovator rig is a sixth-generation semi-submersible drilling, well intervention, and completion unit of GM4000 WI enhanced design.