Bonga deep water project

The Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) began producing oil and gas from Bonga – Nigeria’s first deep water oil discovery – in 2005. Lying 120km offshore, the Bonga floating production vessel has the capacity to produce more than 250,000 barrels of oil a day and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day. By the end of 2012, Bonga had produced about 450 million barrels of oil.
 
When it came into production, the project increased Nigeria’s oil production capacity by around 10%, and it will allow Nigeria to remain a leading energy producer for decades to come.

The project has created the country’s first generation of deep water specialist engineers. By the end of 2010, some 90% of Bonga’s core offshore staff were Nigerian. Bonga also stimulated the growth of support industries vital to offshore deep-water projects.

Nigerian companies contributed significantly to the success of the Bonga project. They designed and built three of the Bonga modules, as well as the foundation piles for the vessel and the pipes transporting the gas to it. The giant single point-mooring buoy was also built in Nigeria: weighing around 870 tonnes, it was the largest of its kind at the time. Engineers conducted Nigeria’s first ever four-dimensional seismic survey at the Bonga field in 2008, covering an area of more than 1,000 square km.

SNEPCo carried out a similar survey in the Bonga field in 2010. This latest survey enhances reservoir imaging thousands of metres beneath the sea bed and helps engineers better understand how oil and water flows here.

Following an oil leak in December 2011, SNEPCo carried out a full review of the Bonga crude oil offloading procedure and has since introduced additional controls to enhance early detection and management of any potential oil leak.

Watch the video: Shell companies in Nigeria: safety at work

An engineer from Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company describes the importance of safety on a deep-water oil production facility offshore Nigeria.