Drilling ops run into technical glitches, postponing production start-up

December 24, 2025, by Melisa Cavcic

Akrake Petroleum, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lime Petroleum Holding, which is an 89.74% subsidiary of Singapore’s Rex International Holding, has encountered technical difficulties during its drilling activities at a field off the coast of Benin.

A jackup rig being transported on a vessel — Borr Drilling’s Gerd jack-up rig; Source: Crystal Offshore Middle East

Akrake Petroleum, as the operator, embarked on drilling operations at the first of three wells at the Sèmè field using Borr Drilling’s Gerd jack-up drilling rig in August 2025 to bring the development project in Block 1 to life.

This block covers 551 square kilometers in shallow water ranging from 20 to 30 meters. In its most recent update on the drilling activities, Rex confirmed that the drilling campaign experienced “further significant technical issues.”

As a result, the production will not take place in 2025. However, the company claims that drilling operations are continuing at the moment to attempt to resolve these issues. Akrake Petroleum Benin holds a 76% interest in the Sèmè field in Block 1 and acts as the operator.

The delivery of the mobile offshore production unit (MOPU) to Akrake and the dry docking of the floating storage and offloading (FSO) unit, contracted in April, were previously on schedule for the start of production in Q4 2025.

Discovered by Union Oil in 1969, the Sèmè field was first developed by Norway’s Saga Petroleum, producing around 22 million barrels of oil between 1982 and 1998, before production was stopped due to low oil prices in the late 1990s.