By Clara Nwachukwu

Indigenous oil and gas conglomerate, Energia Limited said current production from its Emuebendo oil well, located on Oil Mining Lease, OML 56 in Kwale, Delta State, is now about 1,800 barrels of oil equivalent per day, bpd.

Although the well is capable of producing up to 2,500bpd, but the company said it is restricting output to 1,800bpd because it is producing only from one well and with a small storage facility.

Crude oil tanks

Energia is a group of indigenous oil services companies in joint venture with Oando Pls, which has 45 percent equity, while the group retains operating majority stake of 55 percent. Members of the Energia Group include Oil Data, Xenergie, Sowsco, Ciscon, Arib Oil and Weltek, all of which brought in their individual expertise and capacity to bring the well to production.

The Managing Director of the group, Mr. Felix A.V., told journalists last week in Lagos that bringing production to this level from an abandoned well within just two years of acquiring a licence as a Marginal Field Operator, was not an easy task.

This, he explained, was because of the shortage of infrastructure for the storage and transporting of crude. “It’s been very rough at the onset because we were the first company government allowed to produce and transport crude oil by trucking, and this we did safely throughout this period without any incidence.”

He noted that the trucking of crude continued for almost 10 months until the company was able to build its own pipelines, and was able to connect with the Group Gathering Facility, GGF, via the Leased Automatic Custody Transfer, LACT, to the major crude pipeline owned by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company.

Felix also revealed that apart from being the first oil company to truck crude, it is also the first indigenous firm to build and bring a gas plant to production, in order to reduce gas flaring and stem the attendant health, safety and environment challenges associated with such hazards.

The gas plant, which was built in partnership with a member of the group, Xenergie has the capacity to produce 25 million standard cubic feet of gas daily. The gas would be used to for electricity generation and the company said it has has opened preliminary discussions with the Delta State Government with a view to constructing an independent power plant, IPP, for that purpose.

Going forward, Felix said Energia is planning to expand production output, first to 4,000bpd through a second well before the year ended and later on to 12,000bpd, to fulfill its mission to becoming one of the reference points for Marginal Field operators and be able to offer technical expertise to other operators in this category.

In preparation for this, he said the group has already awarded the contract for the construction of two 10,000 capacity storage tanks, to be constructed by a member of the group, Arib Oil, which has expertise in this area.

He added that the group is also in the process of acquiring more seismic data on the oil block, which was inherited from French oil giant, Total E & P Nigeria, which abandoned production from the field in 1978.