BW Offshore has agreed two short-term extensions for the lease and operation of its floating production, storage and offloading units operating in Africa while it explores the potential sale of one of them.
BW Group’s Oslo-listed floater specialist has stretched its deal with Eni’s subsidiary Nigerian Agip Exploration, to keep the 1976-built FPSO unit Abo operating some 40 km off the Nigerian coast until April 14.
In addition, a deal has been struck with Canadian Natural Resources (CNR) for the 1975-built FPSO vessel Espoir Ivoirien to extend its stay until April 28 while the two parties try to hammer out a sale and purchase deal.
The FPSO is operating on the Ivory Coast’s Espoir field offshore southwest of Abidjan. The field came onstream in 2002, with production based on a wellhead platform feeding into the Singapore-flagged FPSO with a 1.1 bbl storage capacity, which was previously a suezmax tanker.
Last month, Andreas Sohmen-Pao’s owner of nine operating FPSOs, also offloaded its 1989-built unit BW Opportunity for $125m.
