ShellNews.net: Shell Insider Article: “…the Bonga field is very late and over budget.”: "I wonder whose 2005 bonus required the "first oil" from Bonga to be produced before the end of the year...": "..looking at today's FT news, Sakhalin does not seem to have received a ringing endorsement from either Thomas Catan (who went to Sakhalin as Shell's guest before Christmas) or the EBRD...": Monday 9 Jan 2006

As you know, the Bonga field is very late and over budget.

Shell have however failed to explain why they have only managed to export 200,000 barrels from the field after six weeks of production, corresponding to a production rate of about 5,000 barrels per day. The FPSO tanker into which the oil was produced can hold 2,000,000 barrels so the amount exported represents only one tenth of the tanker's capacity.

The field is supposed to produce 225,000-250,000 barrels per DAY, and while Shell may have hoped that nobody noticed that 200,000 barrels over six weeks is not quite the same as 225,000 barrels per day...

I wonder whose 2005 bonus required the "first oil" from Bonga to be produced before the end of the year - or maybe somebody's "score card" contained a small "typo" and only required that Bonga produce 200,000 barrels before year end, rather than 200,000 barrels/day???

PS of course the typo may have been in the Shell press release.....but since the production vessel can hold only 2,000,000 barrels, 2,000,000 barrels is the maximum that could have been offloaded last week - and would still correspond to only 50,000 barrels per day, a mere 20% of the expected production level. So while the costs have increased by a substantial margin over the original estimates, income is down by at least 80%....and probably 98%??  Incidentally, looking at today's FT news, Sakhalin does not seem to have received a ringing endorsement from either Thomas Catan (who went to Sakhalin as Shell's guest before Christmas) or the EBRD....

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