Seplat Energy has made an oil and gas discovery at the Aku-01 exploration well onshore Imo State, in Petroleum Prospecting Licence 2A25 within OML 53. The well found hydrocarbons across five reservoir intervals, and the company’s preliminary estimates put the resource at 19 million barrels of oil and 157 billion cubic feet of gas. Seplat said the discovery was not part of its original exploration programme for the well.
The well is being completed as a potential future producer that can be tied back to existing infrastructure, which the company says supports early monetisation. The result also reduces the geological risk on four other prospects on the licence, and Seplat plans a second exploration well in 2027 to test one of them. Seplat holds a 40 percent participating interest in OML 53, acquired from Chevron in 2015, with NNPC Limited holding the balance through their joint venture.
The discovery was announced alongside nine month results showing revenue up 27 percent to 2.76 billion dollars and net income of 260.2 million dollars. Working interest production averaged 144,999 barrels of oil equivalent a day, and the company tightened its full year production guidance to the 145,000 to 155,000 range while cutting capital expenditure guidance to 280 million to 340 million dollars.
For Nigeria, which is targeting 3 million barrels a day of production by 2030 from about 1.72 million today including condensates, small onshore discoveries that can be tied into existing plants are the fastest route to incremental output.