With FEED out of the way, Moroccan project moves closer to sanctioning and first gas

Africa-focused energy company Chariot has completed the front-end engineering and design (FEED) on the key components of its flagship gas project located within the Lixus licence offshore Morocco, inching closer to the final investment decision for this development.

Chariot announced the completion of the FEED stage for the Anchois development on Wednesday, 8 March 2023, bringing the project closer to the first gas. The Lixus offshore licence area, containing the Anchois gas field, is operated by Chariot, which has a 75 per cent interest while its partner, ONHYM, holds the remaining 25 per cent interest.

Adonis Pouroulis, Chariot’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We have made excellent progress across all aspects of our planned development for Anchois and detailed discussions on partnering, gas sales agreements and project finance continue concurrently as we move towards final investment decision. The conclusion of the FEED stage, largely performed by the Subsea Integration Alliance (SIA), is an important step in defining the initial development plan to deliver gas to our anchor customers.”

The FEED for the project was initiated in June 2022. In conjunction with the subsurface development studies, the company highlights that this work confirms the individual components of the initial development, covering three initial subsea producer wells, including the Anchois-2 well drilled with Stena Drilling’s Stena Don rig in 2022, with multi-zone completions to enable gas recovery across multiple stacked sands.

In addition, it entails the subsea infrastructure (SURF and SPS) capable of delivering produced hydrocarbons from the wells to the onshore facilities via a subsea flowline and controlling the wells via an umbilical, with future expansion capabilities to tie back additional wells.

This also encompasses the onshore central processing facility (CPF) to process the hydrocarbons and to deliver treated gas and condensate to market, with an initial capacity of 105 mmscfd; and the onshore gas pipeline to deliver the gas to the anchor gas offtakers via the Maghreb Europe Gas Pipeline (GME), for which a tie-in agreement was signed.

According to Chariot, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) commercial proposals have now been requested while other technical work has been progressing in parallel to the FEED, in the lead-up to development sanction, such as environmental, social impact assessment (ESIA), for which onshore and offshore environmental baseline surveys (EBS) have already been conducted.

Additionally, a field development plan (FDP) is being finalised by the Lixus joint venture partnership to enable the award of the production concession while development drilling planning is ongoing, which can further evaluate the potential of an additional 754 Bcf of 2U prospective gas resources for “minimal additional cost,” says Chariot. The targets identified have an independently assessed geological chance of success ranging from 49-61 per cent.

“In conjunction with the field development plan and environmental and social impact assessment work completed to date, we have further cemented the viability and commercial potential of the development, founded upon its excellent reservoir and gas properties, favourable location with regards to existing infrastructure and the opportunity to leverage off existing, conventional technology,” added Pouroulis.

“We remain fully focused on taking the Anchois project to first gas in a way that can continually grow the resource and project scale and help unlock the basin scale potential that we see across our licence area,” concludedPouroulis.