Vaalco to begin Gabon drilling campaign in September

Oil and gas company Vaalco Energy is planning to start its drilling campaign offshore Gabon next month. 

According to Vaalco’s update on Wednesday, Vantage Drilling has notified Vaalco that it expects to release the Topaz Driller jack-up rig to Vaalco in early September following completion of Eni’s Gabon drilling operations.

It is worth mentioning that the Topaz Driller was also supposed to be used for Tower Resources’ well offshore Cameroon, but Tower decided to release the rig and replace it with the one owned by COSL due to difficulty in matching up the schedule of the Topaz Driller with availability of the site survey data at Tower’s block.

Vaalco also said it plans to spud the Etame 9P appraisal wellbore first, followed back-to-back with the Etame 9H development well. The company plans to drill up to three development wells and two appraisal wellbores in the 2019/2020 drilling program.

Vaalco said it believes that there is significant reserve upside associated with the two appraisal wellbores as they may confirm up to approximately five million net barrels of 2P oil reserves spread across six well locations targeted in future drilling campaigns.

The company is forecasting that the 2019/2020 drilling program will be funded by cash on hand and cash generated from operations. The current estimated net drilling capital expenditures are $20 million to $25 million in 2019 with an additional $5 to $10 million of expenditures in 2020.

Maintenance shutdown

During August 2019, Vaalco completed its planned full field 2019 maintenance shutdown for the Etame Marin FPSO and four platforms. The company stated that the entire work scope was completed successfully with no adverse environmental or safety incidents.

The field was shut-in for approximately nine days during the shutdown and then returned to pre-shutdown production levels.

Earlier in August, Vaalco has exercised an election to extend the lease contract for the FPSO Petróleo Nautipa at Etame through September 2021, with an additional one-year option to run through September 2022.

Offshore Energy Today Staff

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