Panoro Energy on Thursday announced that the floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) for the Aje field, is en route to Nigeria.

The company said the final works on the FPSO have been completed, all major equipment linked to the field development has been delivered to Nigeria and the vessel has departed from Singapore. It is expected to arrive in Nigeria in mid-March 2016, after a short stop in Cape Town.

Anchor handling operations in the field began in January and will be concluded in mid-February. The construction vessel has also began operations and it will install the subsea equipment including the manifold and flowlines in February.

According to Panoro, as soon as the FPSO arrives at its location, it will be joined to the mooring system and risers and a short test of the production systems will be carried out.

“We are excited to be approaching first oil at Aje, offshore Nigeria. Significant operational and contractual progress has been made on the final phase of field development. With the drilling phase now concluded, the installation work and the arrival of the FPSO are the main remaining work streams,” John Hamilton, Panoro’s CEO said.

He added that the field is expected to commence production by the end of March 2016 from the initially planned Q4 of 2015, Offshore Energy Today reports.

Anita Fatunji