Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production (SNEPCo) halted production at Nigeria’s Bonga oilfield on March 4 for turnaround maintenance involving inspections, recertification, testing and repair of equipment as well as upgrades. Shell advised that maintenance works on the field have been completed. A major focus was the Bonga floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which is at the heart of the oil field’s operations. The FPSO has the capacity to produce 225,000 barrels of oil and 150 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. Bonga produced an average of 192,500 bbl/d of oil in 2015. The field is located in OML 118 located 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of the Niger Delta. It is Nigeria’s first deepwater development in depths of more than 1,000 metres. SNEPCo expanded the project with further drilling of wells in Bonga Phases 2 and 3 and through a subsea tie-back that unlocked the nearby Bonga North West field in August 2014. Bonga Phase 3 achieved first oil in October 2015. The first discovery well was spudded in September 1995 after acquiring extensive information about the block via a 3D seismic survey in 1993/94. (Source and image: Shell)