US firm confirms booking of Borr Drilling rig for ops in Africa

Houston-based Vaalco Energy has disclosed a new contract with Borr Drilling, a UK-headquartered offshore drilling player, for a jack-up rig that will carry out its 2025/2026 drilling program off the coast of Gabon, Africa.

In a bid to hire a rig for its 2025/2026 drilling campaign, Vaalco has executed a contract with Borr Jack-Up XIV Inc., an affiliate of Borr Drilling, to drill multiple development and appraisal/exploration wells, as well as perform workovers. The deal is planned to begin in mid-2025 in Gabon. However, the U.S. player also secured options to drill additional wells.

George Maxwell, Vaalco’s CEO, commented: “We are excited about the major projects planned for 2025 that are expected to deliver a step-change in organic growth across our portfolio in the coming years. In Gabon, we continue to work with our joint owners at Etame on our shared goal of executing another successful drilling campaign designed to enhance production and add reserves.

“We have signed a contract with Borr that we believe allows us the flexibility to optimize our drilling and workover plans offshore Gabon. We anticipate the program to begin in mid-2025 with the sequencing and exact number of wells yet to be finalized.”

Vaalco used Borr Drilling’s Norve jack-up rig for its Gabon operations during its 2021/2022 drilling campaign, which started in December 2021 with the drilling of the Etame 8H-ST development well that came online in February 2022.

The rig then moved to the Avouma platform to drill the Avouma 3H-ST development well, which was completed and brought online in April 2022. Vaalco’s third well was the South Tchibala 1HB-ST, which discovered two potential Dentale producing zones.

The firm exercised its options to extend the contract for the Norve rig in July 2022 to add two additional wells to the program: the Ebouri 4H development well and a Northeast Avouma well. Vaalco embarked on work related to the fourth development well in its drilling campaign in August 2022.

The drilling activities began after the Norve rig mobilized to the Southeast Etame North Tchibala (SEENT) platform to drill the ETBSM 2H-ST well, which led to nearly 100 meters of gross Dentale pay sands (72 meters net), exceeding its previous expectations.

Vaalco’s confirmation of a contract with Borr Drilling comes a day after the rig owner disclosed a new assignment for the Norve jack-up rig with an undisclosed company it described as a repeat customer.

Maxwell underlined: “We are planning on multiple wells in the Etame field, multiple wells at our SEENT platform and a redrill and several workovers in the Ebouri field to access production and reserves that were previously shut in and removed from proved reserves due to H₂S.

“Over the past three years, we have delivered on our focused strategy and believe we will continue to do so with the organic growth programs across our diversified portfolio over the coming years.”

As part of the Etame Marin field reconfiguration, Vaalco worked on replacing the BW Offshore-owned FPSO Petroleo Nautipa with an FSO unit and signed a binding letter of intent (LOI) in August 2021 with World Carrier Offshore Services to provide and operate the 2001-built Cap Diamant double-hull crude tanker, as the FSO Teli.

A few months ago, Vaalco Energy completed the acquisition of Svenska Petroleum Exploration, an exploration and production company based in Sweden.

This enabled the U.S. player to enrich its asset portfolio with an offshore block in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa.