Rome, Italy | – Italian energy giant Eni has successfully completed a production test on the Minsala Marine 1 oil well in Congo. The well is in Marine XII Block offshore Congo, 35 kilometres from the shore and 12 kilometres from the recent Nene’ Marine discovery.
It delivered a natural flow of more than 5,000 barrels of oil a day and 14 million standard cubic feet of gas a day from a 37 metres section of the 420 metres oil column which has been discovered. The oil quality was 41 degrees API.
Eni estimates the potential of the discovery to be about 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent, of which 80 percent is oil.
The company is appraising the discovery and has begun studying the commercial development of the hydrocarbon reserves. “The results have exceeded expectation and enable us to plan a fast commercial development of the important Minsala Marine find, similarly to that at Nene’ Marine,” said Eni CEO, Claudio Descalzi.
Over the last four years Eni has been carrying out an exploration programme in the pre-salt geological area of West Africa’s shallow waters. It has already discovered nearly 4 billion of barrels of equivalent oil between Congo and Gabon.
In the Marine XII permit there have been three discoveries: Minsala Marine, Litchjendily marine and Nene’ Marine. These are all close to existing infrastructure and can be brought into production quickly and at competitive cost.
Eni, through its subsidiary, Eni Congo SA, is operator of Marine XII with a 65 percent share. Eni has been operating in Congo since 1968 and produces about 110,000 barrels of oil a day. Eni has been working in Sub Saharan Africa since the Sixties and is involved in exploration and production projects in Angola, Congo, Ghana, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Liberia. Eni produces around 450,000 of oil equivalent a day in Sub-Saharan Africa.
