Australian oil and gas firm Woodside Energy has this week started the offshore drilling campaign in Senegal for the Sangomar Field Development Phase 1, which will be the country's first offshore oil field in production.
Woodside Acting CEO Meg O’Neill said: "We are pleased to announce the launch of these operations, which brings the realization of an oil industry in Senegal an important step closer.
"With the start of the 23-well drilling campaign, we remain on track to achieve targeted first oil production in 2023,” she said.
Woodside will use two drillships owned by Diamond ƶijϻ - the Ocean BlackRhino and the Ocean BlackHawk - to drill the development wells which will be tied to a MODEC-supplied FPSO, which is currently under construction in China.
The Ocean BlackRhino drillship reached Senegalese waters on July 8, 2021. The Ocean BlackHawk will arrive in mid-2022.
A fleet of three supply vessels and three helicopters will support the drilling ships, transporting the materials, equipment and personnel needed for the campaign. The ships will operate out of the Senegal Supply Base, located at Mole 1 in the Port of Dakar, Woodside said.
Woodside’s participating interest in the RSSD joint venture is 82%for the Sangomar exploitation area (with PETROSEN’s participating interest 18%) and 90% for the remaining RSSD evaluation area (with PETROSEN’s participating interest 10%).
The Sangomar Field Development Phase 1 will comprise a stand-alone floating production storage and offloading facility (named after Leopold Sédar Senghor) with a production capacity of approximately 100,000 barrels per day, 23 subsea wells and supporting subsea infrastructure.