Malaysia’s Bumi Armadi has booked its second major floating production contract within months after landing a deal with Italy’s Eni for an FPSO for the operator’s East Hub development in Angola’s deep waters.

Following Bumi’s award of a contract to supply a chartered floater for the Kraken heavy oil project in the UK North Sea last November, the Malaysian group has scored another win to supply an FPSO for Eni’s East Hub project in Block 15/06.

Worth up to US $2.9 billion, the Eni deal – awarded under a Letter of Intent (LoI) – is for the charter, operation and maintenance of an FPSO for the development. “This LoI is our second large (Capex of more than $1 billion) FPSO award in six months and underscores our successful migration into the large-project FPSO sector,” said Bumi’s chairman and chief executive Hassan Basma.

With the award of the LoI Bumi says it can start engineering and procurement for the floater, which will be based on a conversion of the VLCC tanker Armada Ali – making it the Malaysian company’s first VLCC conversion project. “This is the second time Eni has turned to Bumi Armada for an FPSO in West Africa and we will continue to collaborate with our tried and tested value-chain, as we have done in the past, to successfully deliver this project for our repeat customer,” Basma said.

The new floater is due to be delivered in 31 months, increasing the company’s floater fleet to a total of eight units.
First oil from the East Hub project is due in late October 2016.

The development will tap the Cabaca North and South-East discoveries, which are estimated to contain recoverable reserves of 230 MMbbl of oil, with up to 23 subsea production wells and an FPSO with 100,000 b/d of processing capacity. Additional discoveries are due to be tied back to the floater in later development phases.

Eni is already developing the West Hub area in the same block, and which is due onstream later this year. That will exploit an estimated 200 MMbbl of discoveries from the Sangos, N’Goma and Cinguvu fields via 16 subsea wells – 10 producers and six water injectors – and another FPSO with 100,000 b/d of production capacity. Associated gas from the fields is to be reinjected, with peak production from West Hub forecast at up to 80,000 b/d.

Eni announced in March 2013 that it had made a further deepwater discovery in block 15/06 – the ninth there – and increased the West Hub reserves base after drilling the Vandumbu-1 well 150 km (93 miles) offshore in a water depth of 976 m (3,201 ft). That well reached a total depth of 4,107 m (13,470 ft).

A further sidetrack, Vandumbu-1ST reached a TD of 3,480 m (1,141 ft) and encountered 114 m (365 ft) of net pay containing 34° API oil in a Lower Miocene sand. This sidetrack was estimated by Eni to have a well production capacity of 5,000 b/d of oil.

Previous discoveries in block 15/06 include gas condensate at Lira, oil with the Mukovo-1 well, and other oil-bearing discoveries with the Cinguvu-2 and Cabaca South East 3 wells.

Eni operates block 15/06 with 35% equity and its partners are SSI Fifteen Limited with 25% equity, Sonangol and Total with 15%, while Statoil Falcon Oil Holding Angola has 5%.

Offshore