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The country’s oil production has received a major boost with the addition of about 40,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) from the Greater Jubilee Field.
The breakthrough by Tullow Oil Ghana and its partners has now restored production from the Jubilee Field to over 100,000bopd, up from the 85,000bopd being produced from the field for the past three years.
FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, the production vessel on the Jubilee Field, has the capacity to process about 120,000bopd.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to turn on the valves next month to signal the production of additional oil and the first from the Jubilee South East (JSE) well.
The leap in production follows the successful development of the Jubilee South East (JSE), which is an extension of the Jubilee Field, offshore Cape Three Points in the Western Region.
The increase in production comes with enormous benefits to the country including more revenue for the state, the companies and the value chain, skills transfer, more jobs and local content for the participation of indigenous companies.
It also ends the 10 per cent decline in the volume of oil produced in the country in the last three years.
The JSE wells, which Tullow Oil Ghana and its partners are developing under the “Ghana Volume Maximisation Plan”, is part of the Greater Jubilee Field located in the Tano Basin.
The Managing Director of Tullow Ghana, the lead operator of the Jubilee and Tweneboa, Enyera and Ntomme (TEN) oilfields, Wissam Al-Monthiry, who disclosed the breakthrough to the Daily Graphic, said the partners were not surprised at the success of JSE, saying “a big field just got bigger and over the years we have found Jubilee as potentially bigger than we assumed, and today we are looking at the possibility of Jubilee as a billion barrels recoverable.”
The lead operator of Jubilee, Tullow, told the Daily Graphic that the first commercial oil was expected next month.
Tullow and its partners on the Jubilee Field have been investing in Greater Jubilee Field to increase production since the past two years.
They have earmarked $4 billion investment in the exercise for the next 10 years from 2021 to 2031.
The successful development of the JSE, according to industry experts, is a remarkable achievement as it has a significant benefit for the country’s oil industry and for economic growth, with the field moving towards a capacity of 120,000 barrels per day.
An official of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) described the new production wells as good news for the country.
“We all know that since 2018 no field has been added, so this is actually good news,” the Technical Manager of PIAC, Mark Obeng Adu Agyemang, told the Daily Graphic.
Mr Al-Monthiry said with such accomplishment, “Jubilee Field could be placed in a completely different category as a world-class oil and gas field.”
Asked why the investment, he said, as the operator, after a find, the decision would be taken about which parts of the field to develop in a phased approach.
That approach gave the operator the opportunity to learn more about the field as it produced, the Tullow CEO added.
“From the mid-2000s to about 2016, it started to become clear to us that there was an opportunity to develop Jubilee further to the South East,” Mr Al-Monthiry explained.
“In the field trajectory, in 2020, a project was put together to receive a final investment decision to be sanctioned to develop Jubilee Southeast, which progressed even through the COVID-19 period and to the point now that we are looking at first oil here in the coming weeks,” the Tullow boss said.
Mr Al-Monthiry again explained that after the project was sanctioned in December 2020, and over the past two-and-half years, it went through engineering, design, procurement and fabrication of the different parts of equipment for the installation of the subsea infrastructure.
He added that the engineering, design, procurement and fabrication works of the different parts of the subsea infrastructure took place on three continents, but with a significant local content component.
“Let me say that one of the world’s most complicated subsea equipment was fabricated in Takoradi for the project and has since been installed,” Mr Al-Monthiry said.
“With Jubilee SE project, we expect that it will bring jubilee's production back to more than 100,000 barrels a day and keep it there for the foreseeable future, which is an exciting milestone,” he said.
Mr Al-Monthiry said almost $1.5 billion had been spent on the project in line with the $4 billion Ghana Value Maximisation Plan unveiled in 2021, a significant portion of that going into the drilling and completing of Jubilee SE wells, as well as the fabrication and procurement of equipment as part of the Jubilee SE programme.
For sustainability, and if partners are looking at other basins, he said: “Our strategy in Ghana is to focus on exploiting the Jubilee and TEN fields to the maximum.
“First oil in the next few weeks, it looks quite imminent and we are all very excited about it and after that, you will start hearing much more specific plans from us on the next phase of growth for Jubilee beyond,” Mr Al-Monthiry added.
“Currently we feel that there is a lot of room to run on the existing fields and a lot of capital to possibly invest if we can. So we focus on that as a priority and we are considering other opportunities as well,” he said.
On the TEN fields, the Tullow Ghana Managing Director said it was doing well, and that while oil production was on the decline, the partners were working with the government on a multi-year gas contract as well as oil development.
“We will be submitting a second draft of a revised plan of development for the field to the Ministry of Energy,” Mr Al-Monthiry stated.
Once that was approved, it would give a significant lifeline to the TEN Field to grow in its own right and produce higher levels of oil and gas throughout to the end of the licensed period, he added.
In December 2010, history was recorded after President Atta Mills turned the valves on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah to indicate the beginning of the production of crude oil in commercial quantities on the Jubilee Oil Field. It was discovered in 2007 under President John Agyekum Kufuor.
Oil from the country’s oil is the light sweet crude which is a global quality, with high demand in the international market.
The Jubilee Field at the time produced 120,000 bopd. However, after more than a decade of production, its daily output has gone down naturally, hence the investment.
When reached for comments, Mr Agyemang welcomed the “good news”, explaining that PIAC and other relevant stakeholders had been worried for the past few years that production kept dwindling.
“Our recommendation to government and its agencies has been that, we need to bring on stream new fields, because if the current trends continue, probably in the next 10 years, we’ll have to come to the end of production in the fields that we have lost.”
The technical manager at the PIAC Secretariat commended Tullow and its partners for their commitment to the country, saying while other investors were pulling away, Tullow and partners committed to invest that kind of money into the petroleum sector.
“More fields should come on stream and we hope that as part of the Ghana Volume Maximisation Plan, other fields in the Greater Jubilee area will come on stream in the shortest possible time to give impetus to our upstream petroleum industry and help us raise the needed revenue as a country,” Mr Agyemang stated.
