The Rufisque Offshore, Sangomar Offshore and Sangomar Deep Offshore joint venture recently awarded the contract for subsea FEED to Subsea Integration Alliance, with further contracts to be awarded early next year.
Woodside was shaking the tin for this oil development back in February, raising $2.5 billion to buy an additional 50% of the Scarborough field from ExxonMobil and to progress Browse LNG and Senegal.
FAR, meanwhile, has been quiet since its Samo-1 exploration well, the first drilled in offshore Gambia in close to four decades, came up a duster. FAR had been building up the significance of it through 2018 and had garnered plenty of interest in both the project and the fact it was being undertaken by an Aussie junior, when offshore West Africa is traditionally more supermajor territory.
FAR managing director Cath Norman called the start of FEED a "significant milestone" for the joint venture and development of the field.
"From discovery to entering FEED in a four-year period especially given the general market conditions is a substantial achievement for the joint venture," she said.
Woodside CEO Peter Coleman said the plan is to progress SNE development "towards the earliest possible commercialisation of the discovered resources … We are also excited to be moving forward on the SNE development as it is a key pillar of Horizon Two of our growth strategy".
The joint venture would "continue working with the government of Senegal, local communities and our contractors to realise the potential opportunities and benefits from this nationally significant development," he said.
JV project financing has begun and the JV is also working through its environmental and social impact assessment.
SNE-1 FEED will take in studies and activities to finalise the budget, schedule and technical definition for the field before a probable final investment decision mid next year.
Phase 1 will target an estimated 230 million barrels of oil from 11 producing wells, 10 water injectors and two gas injectors and will target the lower and less complex reservoirs.
The floating production storage and offloading unit will have a 90,000 barrel per day capacity in this first phase and is designed to allow subsequent design phases including options for gas export to shore and for future subsea tiebacks from other reservoirs and fields.
FAR was trading at 6.7c this morning and Woodside was at $30.97, down over 0.6%.
