Busy times ahead for Singaporean player off Benin and Norway

Singapore’s Rex International has shared updates on the upcoming plans of its affiliates for assets offshore Benin and Norway.

Rex International holds interests in assets offshore Benin and Norway through its shareholding in Lime Petroleum Holding and its wholly-owned subsidiaries Akrake Petroleum Benin and Norway’s Lime Petroleum.

Lars B. Hübert, Lime’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), said: “Lime and its subsidiaries are poised for an exciting Fall, with several high-impact operations taking place from the second half of 2025. Lime is using the full breadth of our expertise across geographies, augmented by the wider Rex family, to build shareholder value.

“Our nimbleness in entering new jurisdictions and ability to quickly add reserves and establish production, are only made possible with seamless teamwork and collective sharing of expertise and experience among our dedicated employees, a culture imbued strongly into the Lime group, in spite of our short history.” 

The Norway-based Lime Petroleum holds interests in two production fields, Brage and Yme, the Bestla field development project (formerly known as Brasse), and several exploration licences with discoveries and exploration prospects.

The Brage field is said to have several short-term catalysts for growth, with Lime claiming that it continues to overperform in terms of production. In late May, Lime and its partners in production license 055 made an oil discovery along Brage’s eastern flank.

OKEA is the operator of the license with an ownership interest of 35.2%, Lime Petroleum has a 33.84% interest, DNO Norge 14.25%, Petrolia Noco 12.57%, and M Vest Energy 4.42%.

Based on Rex’s latest update, the production from Brage has averaged 5,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) net to Lime, which is expected to increase over the rest of the year as several wells described as promising are scheduled to come onstream in the next six months. 

Combined production from the Yme and Brage Fields is expected to average between 10,000 and 11,000 boepd net to Lime for 2025, representing an increase from the company’s previous guidance of 8,000 to 10,000 issued at the end of February 2025. 

As for Bestla, OKEA shared in late 2024 that the development plan for the field, estimated to contain 24 million barrels of oil equivalent gross in recoverable reserves, consists of a two-well subsea tie-back to the Brage platform, which will serve as the host facility for production, processing, and export.

Meanwhile, Lime has streamlined its exploration licence portfolio, divesting its 30% share in PL1190 Taco and acquiring PL1252 Barmuda (33.8434%), situated close to Brage.

The firm has seen several extension-related developments as well, securing an extension for PL1178 Palmehaven, in which Lime holds a 50% interest. Additionally, extension applications have been submitted for PL820s Iving/Evra and PL1093 Orion, in which Lilme holds 30% and 70% interests, respectively. 

In PL838, in which Lime holds a 30% interest, with partners Orlen Upstream Norway and Aker BP each holding 35%, the Lunde discovery is said to be in the process of maturing towards a plan for development and operation (PDO) in 2026. 

Akrake is the operator of Benin’s Sèmè field, holding an approximately 76% working interest in it thanks to a production sharing agreement (PSA) with the government of Benin (15%) and Octogone Trading (9%).

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

As part of the work program for Block 1 under the PSA, Akrake is working on redeveloping the Sèmè field in a phased development. The firm plans to bring the field back into production while more data is collected on the subsurface, to optimize further development of the field, including previously untapped deeper reservoir sections. 

The Singaporean firm has disclosed that the reprocessing of 2007 3D seismic data has been completed, and a detailed field development plan has been finalized. Additionally, offshore operations have started, with an ongoing site survey over the intended drilling and production location. 

In April, a contract for a 120-day drilling campaign at Sèmè was signed with Borr Drilling for its Borr Gerd jack-up. According to Rex, the drilling rig is scheduled to arrive in Benin later this month, with drilling to start in early July 2025.

The plan entails drilling three wellbores over the next 100 days. The first will be an appraisal well, aiming to gather new data on deeper reservoir units. Afterwards, two horizontal production wells are set to be drilled and completed in the H6 reservoir. While this reservoir has had no previous production, subsurface analysis seems to indicate “significant” remaining reserves, as stated by Rex.

Once the drilling program wraps up in October 2025, a mobile offshore production unit (MOPU) and a floating storage and offloading unit (FSO) are scheduled to arrive at the location under contracts whose signing was announced two months ago.

The MOPU will be hooked to the newly-drilled wells, and production is expected to start in October 2025 at production rates of approximately 16,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd). The unit, which Lime says is undergoing refurbishment in Dubai, is slated to be deployed to Benin in the middle of September 2025.

Following analysis of new subsurface data from Phase 1, Akrake plans to evaluate Phase 2 of the development, which could involve development of the deeper H7 and H8 reservoirs, as well as further development drilling in the H6 reservoir, for which the updated qualified person’s report (QPR) was disclosed in March.