Azule Energy’s Agogo FPSO (floating production, storage, and offloading) unit has produced first oil offshore Angola from the deepwater Agogo Integrated West Hub (Agogo IWH) project in the lower Congo Basin’s Block 15/06.
Eni and BP share 50/50 in the Azule Energy joint venture (JV) which operates the Agogo and Ndungu fields in Agogo IWH where production is forecast to peak eventually at 180,000 BOPD. The two fields boast combined reserves of 450 million bbl.
A week before Azule’s 29 July announcement of its milestone, TotalEnergies reported that its Begonia and CLOV Phase 3 subsea tiebacks, also located in deepwater offshore Angola, had begun sending combined production of 60,000 BOPD to other nearby FPSOs.
Azule Energy holds a 36.84% operating stake in the Agogo IWH project which is Angola’s first new major greenfield project in nearly a decade. Other partners include Sonangol E&P (36.84%) and Sinopec International (26.32%).
In a separate press release, Eni noted that the $5.3-billion Agogo FPSO produced its first oil ahead of plan (within 29 months of the project having received a final investment decision) and a year faster than the “industry average for deepwater projects of similar scale.”
Fast-Tracking in Deep Water
The business model that made such fast-tracking possible leverages Eni’s “Developing While Appraising” phased approach which puts early phases of a field’s exploitation process into play so that risks can be mitigated along the way, speeding up full-field development.
To that end, Agogo phase 1 was initiated in 2020, only 9 months after discovery and a time-to-market record for deepwater developments, Eni said.
Eni also employed in-house engineering and computational resources to run in parallel subsurface studies, engineering, and procurement during front-end loading, giving the operator a stronger grip when the project entered the execution phase.
Fabricated at the Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry yards in Shanghai, the Agogo FPSO integrates technologies to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, including fully electric topside and marine systems, closed flare system, and the first offshore combined-cycle power-generation system of its size.
It is also the first FPSO globally to have a pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) unit that captures CO₂ from onboard gas-turbine exhaust, reducing carbon emissions by about 27%.
Azule Strikes Gas and Condensate Find Offshore Angola
Last month, Azule Energy and Angola’s National Agency of Petroleum, Gas, and Biofuels announced a gas discovery in Block 1/14 at the Gajajeira-01 exploration well in the Lower Congo Basin.
The well spudded 1 April 2025 at 95 m water depth, 60 km offshore encountered gas- and condensate-bearing sandstones in one of the Lower Oligocene targets, designated LO100, Azule reported in a news release.
The preliminary results and fluid samples indicate several reservoirs with good mobility offering initial assessments of 1 Tcf of gas and up to 100 million bbl of associated condensate.
