In an investor presentation yesterday, Woodside said output from the troubled offshore West African project was expected to halve and project costs were 12% over budget. But it failed to give a timeframe for the output production.
The Perth-based company also said in an interim reserves update that estimated gross 2P reserves at Chinguetti were 53 million barrels (MMbbl). This compares to a previous estimate of 123.1MMbbl.
It said a final reserves update for the Woodside-operated field would be provided as part of its annual reserves statement in February next year.
Well design flaws at Chinguetti slashed production in half just two months after the $US730 million ($A967 million) project came onstream in February.
In May, the Chinguetti partners reported lower than expected production from the field.
While production from the field averaged 66,000 barrels per day for the month of March and 53,000bpd for April, from May 1 through to May 10, it only averaged 45,000bpd.
At that time, Woodside believed that the principal reasons for the lower production was the minimal contribution from the two production wells in the northern part of the field as well as gas and water management issues.
This was compounded by a gas compressor failure onboard the floating production, storage and offtake vessel Berge Helene, 80km southwest of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott.
Project partners in Chinguetti are operator Woodside (47.38%), Roc Oil (3.25%), Hardman Resources (19.00%), UK’s BG Group (10.23%) and Premier Oil, also of the UK (8.12%) and the Mauritanian Government (12%).
