African offshore oil field set to come online by month-end

January 12, 2026, 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, is planning to start oil production from an oil field off the coast of Benin by the end of January 2026.

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

After Akrake Petroleum begun 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, the firm encountered technical issues, which delayed the production start-up, previously expected in 4Q 2025.

However, the operator has revealed a new timeline, anticipating the first oil from this field at the end of January 2026, upon the completion of the drilling of the production well AK-2H in the reservoir section, which is expected to start this week.

Akrake Petroleum’s drilling campaign comprised an exploration well (AK-1P) to get more information about deeper, not-produced, hydrocarbon bearing reservoirs (H7 and H8) within the Sèmè field, and two horizontal production wells (AK-1H and AK-2H) in the H6 reservoir unit.

Rex elaborated: “Drilling operations in the geo-mechanically unstable shale layers in the overburden above the reservoir have proven to be more challenging than anticipated, resulting in significant delays due to several stuck pipe incidents, necessitating redrilling of the overburden section.

“The drilling team used new geo-mechanical data, obtained from the current drilling operations, to optimise the drilling parameters and have successfully drilled through the challenging overburden in the AK-2H production well.”

According to the company, the mobile offshore production unit (MOPU) Stella Energy 1 and the floating storage and offloading unit (FSO) Kristina, contracted in April 2025, have already been upgraded and put on location ready for production.

Discovered by Union Oil in 1969 within Block 1, which covers 551 square kilometers in shallow water ranging from 20 to 30 meters, the Sèmè field was first developed by Norway’s Saga Petroleum.

The field produced around 22 million barrels of oil between 1982 and 1998, before production was stopped due to low oil prices in the late 1990s.