Powering Bonga to One Billion Barrels Through Innovative Project Delivery and Technology Deployment
Authors: Mohammed Musa , Brewer Richard , Amuda Daniel , Anyankpele Paul , Oreagba Tayo , Marshal Tasie , Ilesanmi Olaniyi , Osolu Oguejiofo 
Published: April 2024

This paper will share insights into how the Bonga Asset, located in OML 118 deep-water offshore Nigeria, successfully achieved the significant milestone of 1-billion-barrels of oil production since it came on stream in 2005. The paper will focus on how innovative project delivery practices, fit for purpose asset support strategy and selective application of technology by the Deep-water Project team aided in achieving this milestone. This paper is one of a series of Bonga themed papers proposed for OTC (Offshore Technology Conference) 2024.

This paper will explore how the deep-water team was able to sustain and bring in "new oil" to keep the Bonga FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) full and maintain a world-class subsea system availability of above 90% over the course of the field operating life. The paper will chronicle the application of innovative brownfield project delivery practices, engineering execution and asset support focused on prioritization of technical integrity, implementation of innovative cost reduction solutions, adoption of technologies and safe delivery of projects with minimal disruption to the operating asset.

The paper highlights the challenges with field expansion and integration of new facilities to an existing, aging and extensively different system. It will also enumerate the various strategies employed to ensure a flawless start-up, after each expansion of the facility.

The success of Bonga FPSO operations reflects the make-up of the people in the organization - Strong Teams Delivers. The deliberate team composition, integration, and alignment of the contractors to support a shared vision and goal has been fundamental. Well-nurtured, collaborative relationships with critical internal and external stakeholders with regulatory and management oversight was essential in managing risks and realizing business promises.

Challenging the norms, sensitivity and quick response to the market, capital efficiency, structured standardization, replication, and simplification are some of many unique strategies deployed to deliver value to the asset. Notable examples of these include the subsea tree harvesting and refurbishment program, deployment of the well-doubler hardware to address well slot limitation at fully populated drill centres, optimized metrology techniques that shortens the wells hook-up and onstream delivery dates by circa 8 months. The combination of these solutions has led to the addition of circa 300 million barrels of new oil to Bonga to date.

Early and consistent deployment of a strong HSSE (Health, Safety, Security and Environment) culture, engendered by visible leadership, has produced several HSSE record breaking milestones; and the delivery of five Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) campaigns with over 5-million-manhours without significant incident recorded.

This paper will provide valuable learnings to readers, on how an aging facility, in a remote location with limited support infrastructure can benefit from strategic project delivery practices, selective deployment of technology and sound business ethos to deliver sustained production and top quartile availability.

Some of the practices and learnings that will be documented in the paper are currently being leveraged by the organization to progress new projects such as Bonga Main Life Extension (BMLE) and Bonga North projects in exploiting additional resource base in the Bonga Field, to deliver (circa 100 million barrels) to the FPSO. The underpinning model has also been adopted and deployed in other regions for its benefits.