AKPO: Early Completion of a Giant Nigerian Deep Offshore Development

Abstract Akpo field was discovered in January 2000 and production started ahead of schedule in March 2009 in block OML 130, 200 km offshore Nigeria in 1400 m water depth. Akpo reservoirs exist in a 620 million recoverable barrels accumulation of a critical fluid made of very light oils up to 53° API and classified as condensate, with well head shut-in pressures up to 430 bars, fluid temperature up to 116 °C at the wellhead and very high GLR. AKPO is not only a giant condensate field, but also a gas field with 1Tcf planned gas export. Plateau production is 175,000 bbls/day of condensate for offshore loading to tankers and 320 mmscfd of gas exported by pipeline to Bonny NLNG plant, onshore Nigeria. The AKPO field development scheme was described in the SPE document OTC-18816-PP " AKPO: A Giant Deep Offshore Development??, presented at OTC 2007. The AKPO project faced the challenges of combining gigantism, new technological frontiers, world scale industrial execution, scarcity of resources in booming years for the offshore industry and setting new records of local content in an unstable Niger Delta. This paper provides an insight into how TOTAL as Operator responded to these many challenges, in association with the contractors and vendors.Gigantism and new technological frontiersDevelopment of metallurgy solutionsQualification programsRisk managementSharing the risk with contractorsLocal content and Niger Delta threatsNew players in the global marketSimultaneous operations rescue late project TOTAL, with 24% interest, is the operator on OML 130 on behalf of PETROBRAS of Brazil, SAPETRO of Nigeria, CNOOC of China and NNPC of Nigeria.