Italy’s Eni has signed up Maersk Drilling’s ultra-deepwater drillship Maersk Voyager for a 3.5 year deal to carry out a drilling programme on the operator’s high-profile Offshore Cape Three Points project offshore Ghana.

Maersk says the contract from Eni Ghana E&P Ltd. for the newbuild unit also has an option to be extended by one year. The total estimated revenue from the deal is put at US $545 million, including mobilisation and escalations. The drillship is expected to start work in July this year in the OCTP block.

Eni signed a $3.5 Bn FPSO charter with Yinson Holdings Berhad earlier this year to supply the floating production system for the development (see DI, 2 February 2015, page 6).

The block is located in the Tano Basin approximately 60 km offshore. The FPSO is expected to start operations in 2017 for first oil, with first gas to follow in 2018 and peak production to hit 80,000 boe/d in 2019. The project will access around 41 Bcm (1.45 Tcf) of gas and 500 MMbbl of oil-in-place.

The OCTP block is operated by Eni (47.2%) with its partners being Vitol Upstream Ghana Limited (37.8%) and the Ghanaian state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Company (15%), with the latter having an option to take an additional 5%.