The Aje gas field offshore Lagos, Nigeria will start production in 2017, with the gas piped directly into the West African Gas Pipeline WAGP, according to the Nigerian authorities. Four wells have helped determine mean recoverable reserves for the field as 760 Billion cubic feet while the upside potential could shoot the figure up to 1.2Trillion cubic feet. Aje was discovered in 100 metres of water in 1996. The field is located in oil mining lease (OML) 133, which is held by Yinka Folawiyo & Sons.
The fourth well, drilled in February 2008, was expected to confirm that the field indeed had 1.2Trillion cubic feet of gas as well as up to 200million barrels of oil, but it wasn’t tested. The first two wells encountered two main hydrocarbon rich reservoirs, each of Turonian and the Cenomanian age, but Aje 3 encountered the Cenomanian reservoir at a level significantly down-dip from the discovery well, as well as below the existing oil-water contact defined in Aje-2. The well did indeed “see” the Turonian level updip of the two earlier wells and located above the gas water contact encountered in both Aje-1 and Aje-2, but the presence of gas in the reservoir could not be tested due to poor reservoir properties at the Aje-3 location. Participants in the 1,840 sq km OML 113, which contains the Aje field, include Yinka Folawiyo (holding operator 60%),Vitol, Exploration(12.83°o), Energy Equity Resources (6.50%), Providence Resources (2.67°%) and Chevron, which is the technical operator with 18%.
