Ghana's Jubilee Outage to Last Two More Weeks
UK-based Tullow Oil does not expect oil and associated gas production from its Jubilee field offshore Ghana to resume for another two weeks.
A fault was found on the floating production ship (FPSO) two months ago. Production was halted on March 20 for previously scheduled maintenance.
“Technical investigation of the condition of the turret bearing on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah has confirmed that the bearing has been damaged and is no longer able to rotate as originally designed,” said Tullow on April 8.
”Oil production and gas export can continue but under revised operating and off-take procedures,” it added, cautioning that implementing these would require care. “Tullow currently estimates that production from the FPSO will re-start in approximately two weeks time and will also take time to ramp-up.” Oil is loaded offshore onto tankers, while gas is piped to shore in Ghana for local use.
Tullow’s recently published annual report said that Jubilee exceeded its gross oil production target during 2015, averaging 102,600 b/d (36,400 b/d net to Tullow) and also achieved a stable rate of gas delivery to shore – following final commissioning of Ghana’s onshore process plant in March 2015 – that averaged 90mn ft3/d in 4Q 2015 (equivalent to 0.93bn m3/yr). It had already forecast that 2016 Jubilee production would be lower because of scheduled maintenance during March. Tullow operates Jubilee with a 35.48% interest, partnered by US firms Anadarko and Kosmos each with 24.08%, state Ghana National Petroleum Corporation has 13.64% and South African state PetroSA 2.73%.
Tullow and the same partners, but with different stakes, are currently developing a second offshore Ghana oil and associated gas project, called TEN. Its FPSO sailed from Singapore on January 23, testing on the field is scheduled this quarter, with oil production to follow in the second half of 2016, and gas to shore at rates of about 0.3bn m3/yr in the second half of 2017. Eni and Vitol are developing a similar oil/gas project, OCTP, with oil and gas due onstream a year after that.
Ghana's sources of gas are limited and it is important for local power generation, and so it normally relies on erratic Nigerian gas imports through the West Africa Gas Pipeline to meet shortfalls. This explains why a floating LNG import project in Ghana – a joint venture of Nigerian state NNPC and private Nigerian business Sahara Energy – has already taken a final investment decision and is scheduled to start operations in mid-2016, while a similar proposal by Quantum Power is advancing, and another by a French utility investor in Africa, Eranove, is also a possibility.
Mark Smedley