NNPC awards $3.1b Egina FPSO contract to Samsung

By The Citizen

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) and its Joint Venture partners, Total Upstream Petroleum Nigeria Limited, have awarded the $3.1 billion Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO), vessel contract for Egina deepwater oil field to Samsung Heavy Industries.

Samsung  emerged  preferred bidder in a highly competitive  bid conducted  by the National Petroleum Investment Management System  (NAPIMS) the investment arm of the NNPC and approved NNPC GEC (Group Executive Committee) headed by the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke.

The multi-billion Egina field in OML130 near Akpo Field, is the third  deep offshore development projects of the French oil giant in Nigeria with reserve potential  in excess of  550 million barrels and a peak production of 150, 000 barrels per day

The NNPC management awarded the Egina FPSO contract to  Samsung  after a comprehensive review of the economics, the track records of the bidders and having met all the requirements of NCD including 10,000 tons in- country fabrication of topsides,
Besides, as a good corporate citizen Samsung through it's capacity building programme had trained many Nigerians over the years while plans were equally in top gear to train many Niger Delta indigenes in South Korea under it's skill acquisition programme to improve the capacity and competency of Nigerians in 6 G welding.

According to sources, Hyundai Heavy Industry HHI bided $3.8billion for the Egina FPSO while Samsung Heavy Industry stuck to $3.1 billion for the same facility, development that gave it the winning edge.

Speaking on the scope of the multi-billion dollar project, Frank Ejizu the General Manager Samsung Nigeria, said the new FPSO will measure approximately 330m in length, 61m in width and 33.5m in depth, and is expected to have an oil storage capacity of approximately two million barrels.

Besides, the FPSO will equally have topsides modules with a gross dry weight of 34,000tons and it will be delivered on schedule for the production activities by 2014.
The field was discovered in December 2003 when the Egina-1 well was drilled. Following the discovery, the appraisal well Egina-2 was drilled in October 2004.

The appraisal programme and seismic data processing resulted in the Egina-3 well drilling in September 2006, which occurred at a water depth of approximately 1,500m. Following this, Egina-4 was drilled in November 2006 and Egina-5 was drilled in January 2007.

Located 150km off the coast of Nigeria and about 20 km from Akpo oil field, Egina oil field in Oil Mining Lease OML 130 is a production sharing contract being developed by Total Upstream Nigeria (24 per cent) in partnership with NNPC (10 per cent), CNOOC (45 per cent), Sapetro (5 per cent) and Petrobras (16 per cent). Egina is the third deep offshore development of Total in Nigeria.

The field is currently under development and the production is scheduled to begin by 2014/2015.