Nigeria is driving the global offshore drilling riser market to an estimated $4.1 billion by 2023 and $4.9 billion by 2033.
Nigeria has its bulk of reserves located offshore in the Gulf of Guinea, the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Bonny, and the Niger River Delta throughout the nation.
The growing figures of offshore projects coupled with the rising production of shale gas globally will garner the requirement for offshore drilling risers. Also, extensive investments in offshore production and exploration activities have been spiked by crude oil extraction.
These has led to massive growth in the past couple of years. In just five years, there has been a remarkable boost in the investment for many offshore projects which has trusted the worldwide demand for offshore drilling risers.
As revealed by Oil Review Africa, based on the large offshore oil and gas deposits available in the African continent and the Middle East, these two regions are envisaged to be the most profitable areas for the oil and gas market. Furthermore, there are indications this market will increase due to the recent establishment of oil and gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
For example, a large oil and gas discovery was made by Shell Plc in a Namibian offshore well in January 2022.
Another sighting is the Graff-1 well drilling which has been inert for the past 25 years; assets worth about 250 – 300 million barrels of oil and gas have been uncovered since the Graff – 1 drilling began. With this, the area is set to see a massive surge in foreign investment.
For now, little observation of the region is being done, however, the present priority of the activity is on the deep as well as ultra-deep offshore. So, it is envisaged that the number of offshore drilling risers in the area will surge all-around the duration of the projection based mostly on the West African exploration & production (E&P) operations.
What has been pushing contracts for offshore drilling risers has been the many numbers of final investment agreements for offshore projects which have been of importance in the last few years. Also, because crude oil prices are getting better, there has been a boost in investments in offshore E&P campaigns all over the world.
E&P engineers have started enjoying a reduction in the overall cost of projects as the arrival of integrated service providers, who produce the design engineering and installation services has become a regular trend.
However, fluctuation in crude oil prices and the spread of the supply-demand gap are part of the reasons there is a belief that the growth prospects of the offshore drilling riser market in the future seem a bit sketchy.
The good news is that the ever-increasing number of offshore uncovering in Nigeria, Iran, South Africa, Egypt, Guyana, and Mozambique are anticipated to establish remarkable development opportunities for offshore drilling riser manufacturers in the Middle East & Africa region.
