Tullow, Ghana Gas Start Planned Shutdown

Tullow said February 1 it began a shutdown of the Jubilee oil field offshore Ghana, including associated gas flows to shore. It operates Jubilee and one other (TEN) field offshore Ghana.

State-owned Ghana Gas also shut its Atuabo gas process plant for 24 days starting February 1 for planned maintenance to coincide with the halt in all offshore Ghanaian gas supplies.

Tullow had said January 10 that the Jubilee field would be shut in 1Q2018 for two periods totaling four to six weeks to effect long-planned repairs to the production ship’s turret bearing. It told NGW February 1 that the Jubilee shutdown began that day, adding: "There’s no TEN gas right now [either], as Ghana Gas is taking the opportunity to undertake maintenance at their onshore facility."

Ghana Gas noted that its "scheduled temporary shutdown [of Atuabo] …is to allow our team of engineers to undertake a planned routine maintenance on the facility to help improve upon the plant's capacity as well as prolong its lifespan." The Chinese-built onshore plant at Atuabo can process up to 120mn ft³/d of gas from the Jubilee field. Gas is supplied to the state-owned generator Volta River Authority to operate gas-fired power plants, including one near Atuabo. It raises the question of whether VRA’s hydro-electric units will be enough to cover Ghana’s electricity needs, while no gas is landed from Jubilee or TEN.

Sources told local newspaper Graphic Online that the planned shutdown will give Tullow time to work on the subsea interconnection linking its new TEN oil and gas field to Jubilee, and should enable 45mn ft³/d of TEN gas to access the Ghanaian power generation market. 

Alternative gas supply?

There were reports that, given no gas is being produced offshore Ghana, the government there was continuing to supply at least 50mn ft³/d gas to Aboadze in western Ghana to fuel the AMERI power plant there. But it was unclear if this was piped imports from neighboring Cote d’Ivoire, or else the first regas by a small-scale LNG import facility at Aboadze. The latter’s operator IM Skaugen did not respond to NGW on whether its mini-LNG import unit is yet operating. (In its last public statement December 1 2017, Skaugen said its mini-LNG unit -- it has yet even publicly to confirm its location as Aboadze - had complete gassing up and cooldown, using liquid nitrogen, and that "construction of the port facility to receive LNG and load trucks" had commenced and was expected to be complete early December 2017)