Eni has upgraded its field estimate at Ndungu on Block 15/06 offshore Angola at 800 million to 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent in place following the successful drilling of the Ndungu-2 appraisal well.
The Ndungu-1 discovery well had been drilled in 2019 with original oil in place (OIIP) of 257m barrels according to Sonangol. With Ndungu-2, Eni has potentially discovered an additional 500m to 700m barrels of oil equivalent, confirming the tremendous success of its infrastructure-led exploration strategy in the country.
Ndungu-2 marks the seventh discovery of Eni on Block 15/06 in four years. The adoption of an enabling environment by the administration of João Lourenço had led to the relaunch of the exploration campaign in 2018, which resulted in discoveries at Kalimba-1 and Afoxe-1 the same year. These were followed by Agogo-1, Ndungu-1 and Agidigbo-1 in 2019, and Cuica-1 in 2021.
Source: MinFin Angola
Out of these, Agogo benefited from incentives by being granted marginal status under the Presidential Legislative Decree 6/18 of May 2018. It was put on stream and started producing in January 2020 as a tie-back to the N’Goma FPSO. It is now being subject to a full field development planning with a new FPSO hub in the making.
Cuica was next and achieved first oil in August 2021 from the Armada Olombendo FPSO. The vessel also started receiving production from the Cabaça North field in September 2021. Ndungu-1 came next, with first oil achieved in early 2022 via an early production scheme tied-back to the N’Goma FPSO. A second producer well is now expected at Ndungu in Q4 2022, according to Eni.
Full details on the exploration and development activities on Block 15/06 are available in the “Projects” section within your Hawilti+ research terminal.