The East Hub and West Hub, are located about 350 km north-west of the city of Luanda, in the Eni-operated Block 15/06. West Hub entered production at the end of 2014, while production at East Hub began in February 2017, five months ahead of schedule, giving it one of the best time-to-markets in the industry. Much of our focus in this area is developing offshore oil fields and the block has seen Eni's first work in the deep water off Angola’s coast. The first phase involves the development of six fields (Sangos, Cinguvu, Mpungi, Ochigufu and Vandumbu) in the West Hub, which will be linked by 31 subsea wells. Of these, 18 are producing and 13 injecting to the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit Ngoma. For the East Hub area, development involves production in the fields of Cabaça South East and Cabaça Central UM8. These have 11 wells, six producing and five injecting, linked to FPSO Olombendo. Production comes from the West Hub and the East Hub projects that in 2020 produced 123 kboe/d (42 kboe/d net to Eni).
In January 2020 we started producing oil from the Agogo offshore deposit, located in Block 15/06 in Angolan waters, barely nine months after it was discovered, thanks to the operational synergies developed with the Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) Ngoma. Start-up involved the drilling of the Agogo-1 well, which achieved a flow rate of around 10 thousand barrels of oil per day. In the same year, in February, we have successfully drilled Agogo-3, the second appraisal well of Agogo discovery, increasing by about 40% the estimate of oil in place, which is now of 1 billion barrels with further upside to be tested, and pave the way for its full field development with a third production hub.
During the 2020 the Block 15/06 exploration license was renewed for additional three years. The agreement will allow to assess the possible additional mineral potential of the area. Other development activities in the operated block concerned:
- the completion of the subsea production and injection facilities at the Cabaça North & UM 4/5 project
- studies for the full field development of the Agogo field
- activities related to the Ndungu discovery development.
In September 2021 Eni started production from Cabaça North, via the Armada Olombendo FPSO and through our Infrastructure-Led Exploration strategy. The Cabaça North development, with an expected peak production rate in the range of 15 kbopd, will increase and sustain the plateau of the vessel, a zero-discharge, zero-process flaring FPSO with an overall capacity of 100 kbopd. This is the second start-up achieved by Eni Angola in 2021, after the Cuica Early Production achieved in July. A third start-up is started in February 2022 with the Ndungu Early Production in the Western area of Block 15/06. The start-up of Ndungu EP is yet another example of how Eni Angola keeps creating value on Block 15/06 through its Infrastructure-Led Exploration strategy. Ndungu EP project, with an expected production rate in the range of 20,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) will sustain the plateau of the Ngoma.
Other development activities in the operated Block 15/06 in 2021 concerned the Agogo Early Production Phase 2 development project with start-up of construction activities relating to the planned offshore facilities. The full field development of the Agogo project provides for the construction of an additional FPSO. Concept definition studies and FEED activity were completed and started up the activities for the assigning main contracts. On the non-operated blocks, development activities progressed in the Block 0. Other development activities concerned the FEED activity of the Punja project in the Block 3/05-A (Eni’s interest 12%).