Production began at the end of January from the BP-operated Block 31 in Angola, one of the largest subsea developments in the world. The development will produce from four oil fields – Plutao, Saturno, Venus and Marte (PSVM) – which were discovered between 2002 and 2004 in water up to 2,000m deep, some 400 km north-west of Luanda. Initial production of around 70,000 bopd will come from three production wells in the Plutao field and is expected to ramp up to plateau rates of 150,000 bopd over the coming year as the Saturno, Venus and Marte fields come on stream in 2013 and 2014. Nineteen discoveries have been made on Block 31 to date, which covers an area of 5,349 km2 in water depths which range from 1,500 to over 2,500m.
PSVM produces through a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO) which has 1.6 MMbo of storage capacity. It is the first FPSO in Angola’s ultra-deep water. A total of 40 production, gas and water injection wells will be connected to the FPSO through 15 subsea manifolds and associated subsea equipment.
The International Monetary Fund recently stated that it expects Angola’s oil production, which was 1.73 MMbopd last year, to grow more than 4% in 2013 to 1.8 MMbopd. Angola is Africa’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria.
