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 COTE
D'IVOIRE
West Africa
The waters of Côte d’Ivoire overlie the Abidjan Basin.
This east-west trending basin is narrow and lacks sediments compared to
those to the east and south due to a lack of both early rift fill and
deltaic overburden.
The state is represented by Petrolières de la Côte
d’Ivoire (PETROCI) established in 1975. The continental slope is steep
so waters rapidly deepen offshore. Its petroleum potential is less than
that of countries to the south but it has seen recent success.
 Two shallow water oil fields (Espoir and Belier) came
onstream in 1980. Espoir was brought onstream by Phillips using a
jackup, which, at its peak, produced 25,000 Bbls per day before
abandonment in 1988. Prior to 1988 around 35 mm Bbls had been produced
from 14 wells with all gas flared.
Belier was also thought to be of limited extent and was
abandoned. In 1994 United Meridian (now Ocean Energy) made a series of
eight consecutive shallow water oil discoveries and began producing from
the Lion oil field and Panthère gas condensate field. These small
discoveries and a softening of terms led to increased interest in the
country. The Foxtrot gas condensate field was put onstream in 2001 and the abandoned Espoir field was redeveloped with a new FPSO in
February 2002 by CNR, followed by a tieback to West Espoir in 2005.
PETROCI licensed the first wholly deepwater area in 1997
while the first deepwater oil, the 150 to 250 mm Bbl Baobab field was
discovered in March 2001 in 1,485m of water. Baobab now delivers oil
from subsea well clusters to an FPSO.
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