Italian Eni Starts Nigerian Field

Italian Eni has started gas and condensate production from its Obiafu 41 discovery in the Niger Delta, it said October 23. It completed the well "just three weeks" earlier. The discovery contains about 28bn m³ of gas and 60mn barrels of condensate, and the gas from this discovery will largely be channelled to the domestic market in order to feed the power sector.

This record time-to-market was made possible thanks to Eni's new integrated model, under which the various disciplines work in parallel from the exploration phase, and all synergies with existing production facilities are properly leveraged, it said. At plateau, production will reach 3mn m³/day of gas and 3,000 barrels/day of condensate.

The gas from this discovery will be processed at the Eni-operated Ob-Ob plant, and then sent to the Okpai Power Plant, also operated by Eni. Okpai is Nigeria’s first independent power plant has an installed capacity of 500 MW. An upgrade is underway which will double its capacity. Once the upgrade is completed, Eni will generate a fifth of the entire national electricity production, making itself the biggest.

About 30% of Eni’s gas production is supplied to the domestic market, the rest being liquefied and exported. Eni produces a lot of associated gas as well and is cutting flaring in order to supply gas to power stations. It hopes to bring flaring in Nigeria to zero by 2025.

In addition to Okpai power plant, Eni supplies power from its facilities to 85 local communities with about 500,000 people. In 2018, Eni's equity hydrocarbon production in Nigeria amounted to 100,000 boe/day.