French supermajor TotalEnergies has spudded the first development well on its Akpo West project offshore Nigeria.

Akpo West is located in deep-water Oil Mining Licence 130 which also hosts the supermajor’s big Akpo and Egina fields, currently producing from two separate floating production, storage and offloading vessels.

Its development has been on the drawing board ever since Akpo came on line in 2009, but has been held back in the main by fiscal issues within Nigeria.