$1.1bn oil platform for Nigeria
2005-02-27 14:58
Lagos - The US oil giant ChevronTexaco has signed a $1.1bn deal with South Korea's Daewoo Shipping and Marine Engineering to build a giant floating platform to exploit Nigeria's offshore reserves, the firm announced on Friday.
ChevronTexaco affiliate Star Deep Water Petroleum hopes to have the "floating production, storage and offloading vessel" - a sort of huge tanker ship with its own drilling platform - in service over the Agbami field in the Gulf of Guinea by the end of 2008.
The company hopes to produce 250 000 barrels of oil per day from the Agbami field, which lies 70km off Nigeria's Atlantic coast at a depth of 1 371 metres, it said in a statement.
Star's partners in the project include a second ChevronTexaco affiliate Texaco Nigeria Outer Shelf, Petroleo Brasileiro Nigeria Limited, Statoil Nigeria Limited, Famfa Oil Limited and the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
With exports of around 2.5 million barrels per day, Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil export and the sixth largest in the world.