Eni has brought a second field online at its Baleine concession off Côte d’Ivoire, hitting the milestone faster than almost anyone expected and underscoring the Italian energy giant’s push to fast-track one of West Africa’s biggest oil finds in decades.
Baleine was discovered in September 2021 and remains the largest oil and gas find in Côte d’Ivoire in a generation, with an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 3.3 trillion cubic feet of gas beneath the seabed. Rather than build new infrastructure from scratch, Eni upgraded and redeployed its existing FPSO Baleine vessel, letting the company tie in the new field and ramp up output far quicker than a conventional project timeline would allow.
Eni operates the block alongside Ivorian state oil company Petroci Holding, and the gas coming from the new field is earmarked mainly for domestic power generation, helping Côte d’Ivoire lean less on imported fuel to keep its lights on. Meanwhile the crude output adds a fresh stream of export revenue and foreign exchange for the West African nation.
The rapid-fire development is being watched closely across the region as a test case for how quickly a major offshore discovery can be turned into real production — and real income — for the host country.
Source: (hellenicshippingnews.com)