Go time for Noble drillship drawing closer as 4D seismic survey over African oil fields ends

A drillship, owned by the U.S.-headquartered offshore drilling giant Noble Corporation, is slated to begin its new drilling campaign in western Africa later this month, after Tullow Ghana, a subsidiary of the UK-based Tullow Oil, wrapped up a 4D seismic survey over its fields off the coast of Ghana.

Tullow Oil, which operates two oil fields in the West African country, Jubilee and TEN, has completed the 4D seismic survey over these fields that will be used to high-grade the firm’s 2026+ drilling campaign, according to its partner, Kosmos Energy, which underlines that the production in Ghana averaged approximately 33,000 boepd net in the first quarter of 2025.

While the former started producing oil in 2010 through the floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) unit Kwame Nkrumah MV21, the latter did so in 2016 through the permanently moored FPSO TEN.

The operator booked the Noble Venturer drillship for its campaign, which is scheduled to start in May 2025. Worth $171 million, the drilling program entails six firm wells and is estimated to take 360 days. The Noble Venturer rig is slated to arrive later this month to drill two Jubilee wells in 2025.

Afterward, the rig is scheduled to undertake a four-well drilling campaign on Jubilee in 2026, which is expected to benefit from the 4D seismic data that is currently being processed with algorithms.

Commenting on this, Andrew G. Inglis, Kosmos’ Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, highlighted: “This new seismic data, combined with the latest processing techniques, will support the high grading of the future infill drilling program.” 

The 2014-built Noble Venturer drillship, constructed at Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) in Korea, can operate in water depths of 12,000 feet (3,658 meters), and its maximum drilling depth is 40,000 feet (12,192 meters). This rig can accommodate 230 people. 

Earlier this year, Tullow Oil joined forces with Opsealog to digitalize its marine operations in Ghana to enable accurate vessel tracking and glean insights needed to optimize fuel consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions.