NIGERIA: Boi Area Poses Pressure Challenges For BG

BG, the British gas company, lost the original Ogide-1 hole after it took a kick at an undisclosed depth. The rig moved 80 metres updip but continued to chase the same targets. Ogide -1 is located in the vicinity of Boi-1, drilled by Statoil (in 1996), in what is now known as OPL 286-DO, in deepwater Niger Delta. Statoil’s reports indicate that it encountered some gas in the hole but couldn’t reach the target depth because of pressure problems. The campaign ran out of casing strings, and stopped at a total depth of about 2,300metres subsea. The conventional thinking is that a mud diapir is transmitting much of the pressure throughout the system. Statoil walked out of OPL 213 in 2000, handing over the operatorship to Chevron, who carved out Oil Mining Lease (OML 132) and relinquished that part of the lease in 2005. It’s not clear whether BG will still attempt to drill what it calls Boi-1 deep, after Ogide, or whether it has already combined the objectives of Ogide-1 with the objectives of Boi deep. The Boi deep was to test the levels that Statoil couldn’t reach in 1996. BG’s geoscientists are deeply divided over the choice of the Boi area for their first outing in deepwater Nigeria. The company is also technical partner in OPL 284, located north of Agip’s OML 134.