Vaalco takes over Ivory Coast oil field, launches Gabon campaign

West Africa-focused oil producer Vaalco has taken over as operator of the Kossipo field off Ivory Coast, where it is pursuing a minimum 7,000 barrels/day crude development, it said Feb. 24.

In an operational update, the Houston-based company said it had been "confirmed as operator" of Kossipo, which sits in block CI-40, with a 60% working interest, alongside state-owned PetroCI, which holds the remaining 40%.

The company expects to complete a field development program in the second half of this year, Vaalco said.

The field, which was discovered in 2002 and appraised in 2019 -- testing at more than 7,000 b/d -- holds 293 million barrels of oil in place, according to Vaalco.

It sits southwest of Vaalco's Baobab field, whose floating production, storage and offloading vessel is expected to return to Ivory Coast and commence production by late March after a refurbishment in Dubai.

Vaalco said previously that it was planning "significant development drilling" in 2026 on the 4,500 b/d Baobab field.

Elsewhere, in Gabon, Vaalco has brought the first well of a five-well campaign online on the Etame Marin license.

The campaign was initially slated to start in the third quarter of 2025, but eventually got underway toward the end of last year. It includes development, appraisal and exploration wells, and hopes to bring the Ebouri field back into meaningful production and carry out infrastructure-led exploration off the Etame field.

"Successfully drilled, completed and placed on production the Etame 15H-ST development well in the 1V block of the Etame field, with a lateral of 250 meters of net pay in high-quality Gamba sands near the top of the reservoir," the company said in its update.

The well has a "stabilized flow rate of approximately 2,000 gross b/d of oil," it said.

In mid-February, Vaalco also spudded the West Etame exploration well, which, if successful, would add "meaningful production and reserves".

Organic growth

CEO George Maxwell said the company had begun 2026 "with some very meaningful events that are positioning Vaalco to deliver expected 225% organic production growth by 2030."

The company did not provide an update on its Block P project off Equatorial Guinea, which contains the Venus field and where it recently completed a front-end engineering and design study.

Vaalco pumped 21,150 b/d of oil equivalent in 2025, at the midpoint of its guidance.

Maxwell previously told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, that he was aiming to increase output to 50,000 boe/d, through a combination of organic and inorganic growth.

Ivory Coast has become a significant West African producer thanks to Eni's huge Baleine oil and gas development.

Baleine's light sweet crude, which has an API of around 40 degrees, finds buyers in Ghana, Brazil, the Netherlands and elsewhere, according to data from S&P Global Commodities at Sea. The country exported 50,000 b/d of crude in the fourth quarter.

Murphy's dry well

Vaalco's operational update came as fellow Houston-based oil company Murphy Oil said it will plug and abandon its Caracal-1X exploration well off Ivory Coast, because the hydrocarbon shows in the well were deemed non-commercial.

The well, on Block CI-102, is the second of Murphy's three-well drilling campaign on the block, with the first, Civette-1X, also proving to be dry. It holds a 90% stake in the block, alongside PetroCI with the remaining 10%.

Nevertheless, the company "remains committed to moving forward with the Bubale-1X well in Block CI-709", it said in a statement Feb. 23, the third well in the campaign. "This well targets a geological play independent from Civette-1X and Caracal-1X," Murphy added.

Murphy, which has assets across the US, Canada, Vietnam and Ivory Coast, pumped 182,294 boe/d of oil and gas in 2025, it said last month.