Ghana Oil Output to More Than Double by 2021 With New Fields

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/ghana-oil-output-to-more-than-double-by-2021-with-new-fields.html

 

Ghana, West Africa’s second-biggest economy, expects oil production to more than double to 250,000 barrels a day by 2021 as output rises at the Jubilee field and other sites start pumping.

 

The country has new crude discoveries at different stages of appraisal and development, Nana Boakye Asafu-Adjaye, chief executive officer of the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corp. known as GNPC, said in an interview in the capital, Accra, yesterday. At the Tullow Oil Plc-operated Jubilee field, 60 kilometers (37 miles) off Ghana’s western coast, output has averaged 110,000 barrels a day over the last three months, he said.

Ghana Oil Output to More Than Double by 2021 With New Fields

Oil displaced cocoa as Ghana’s second-most valuable export in 2012, with shipments worth $3 billion, according to the central bank. Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

 

In the next “five to eight years we will be spending $20 billion” to develop Jubilee and other discoveries, Asafu-Adjaye said. Jubilee, which started output in December 2010, is Ghana’s lone crude-exporting oil field. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, pumped 1.8 million barrels a day in March.

 

Oil displaced cocoa as Ghana’s second-most valuable export in 2012, with shipments worth $3 billion, according to the central bank. Gold remains the country’s top foreign-currency earner. Kosmos Energy Ltd. (KOS) also has a stake in the Jubilee field, while Tullow, Kosmos and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) are developing the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme, or TEN, project.

“First oil from TEN could be in late 2016,” Asafu-Adjaye said. The site may have reserves of 245 million barrels and peak daily production is forecast at 76,000 barrels, he said.

Onshore Exploring

GNPC is also pushing exploration in the onshore Voltaian Basin which stretches from the south to the northern part of Ghana and covers about 40 percent of the country, Asafu-Adjaye said.

 

“We have conducted field mapping and site surveying of selected locations for slim hole drilling,” he said in a speech yesterday. In 2011, GNPC received geophysical data on the region.

 

Tullow’s shares fell 0.9 percent to 1,037 pence in Londonyesterday, bringing the decline this year to 18 percent.

 

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.