One of West Africa’s most consequential offshore restarts is now underway. Vaalco Energy and its partners have successfully brought the Baobab oil field back into production off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire, ending an 18-month operational pause that began when the Baobab Ivoirien FPSO was taken offline for a comprehensive life-extension overhaul — and opening the door to a major new drilling campaign before 2026 is out.
The Baobab Ivoirien floating production, storage and offloading vessel was withdrawn from service in January 2025 and transported to Drydocks World in Dubai for a nine-month refurbishment programme. The overhaul was not a routine maintenance exercise — it was a deliberate investment in the field’s future, designed to extend the vessel’s operational capacity well beyond the immediate term and to ensure it could handle the additional production volumes expected from a significant development drilling programme planned at Baobab in the second half of 2026.
Once the Dubai work was completed, the FPSO sailed back to Côte d’Ivoire in early Q2 2026, where it was re-moored into position and reconnected to the CI-40 block’s subsea field infrastructure. Production has now resumed from four wells, with the remaining three producers expected to return to service shortly. Field performance, Vaalco confirmed, is tracking in line with the company’s pre-restart expectations.
George Maxwell, Vaalco’s Chief Executive Officer, put the restart in the context of a company that has moved with notable speed in Côte d’Ivoire: ‘In early 2024, we had no assets in Côte d’Ivoire and now we have developed a strong position with development and exploration potential. We are at a critical junction, with successes in the Gabon drilling campaign and the Baobab field returning to production, and we believe that the remainder of 2026 will be very impactful.’
The Phase 5 drilling programme at Baobab — expected to launch in H2 2026 — will be the field’s most ambitious in years. The campaign is planned to include four production wells, two to three water injection wells, and two workovers, collectively targeting meaningful incremental production from the main Baobab reservoir. Vaalco holds the CI-40 block licence through 2038 and has described the field as carrying significant development drilling upside over that extended horizon.
Maxwell was emphatic about the company’s near-term trajectory: ‘We remain focused on execution and driving meaningful growth through our organic capital programs that we believe will translate into value for our shareholders in 2026 and beyond.’ The Baobab restart, combined with active operations in Gabon, positions Vaalco as one of the more consequential mid-cap operators on West Africa’s continental shelf at a moment when the region’s upstream calendar is increasingly crowded with high-impact activity.
Source: offshore-energy.biz | offshore-mag.com | oedigital.com | energy-pedia.com