24 April 2013, Accra – Crude oil production from Ghana’s first oil discovery at the offshore Jubilee field is near to projected production peak, according to UK’s Tullow Oil, the lead operator on the discovery.
Tullow said production stands at between 110,000 and 115,000 barrels per day over the last 3 months, just short of the expected production plateau capacity.
Ghana joined the league of oil producing countries when it began production from the Jubilee field in December 2010, with reserve estimates of up to one billion barrels, Reuters reported.
Tullow set plateau production of 120,000 barrels for 2011 and later to mid 2012, but missed both targets because of underperformance at the wells.
“The field is currently doing between 110,000 and 115,000 barrels a day,” Dai Jones, president of the UK energy company’s Ghana operations, told Reuters on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference in Accra.
Jones said Jubilee has produced about 62 million barrels of oil since its start-up, adding that the field’s response to the remedial work had been encouraging.
Tullow holds a 35.5% stake in the field, other stakeholders being Ghana’s state-run GNPC with 13.6 percent, investment group Kosmos with 24.1%, Anadarko Petroleum with 24.1% and Sabre/PetroSA with 2.7%.
According to Jones, gas from the Jubilee field was being reinjected into the undersea reservoir pending the completion of a pipeline infrastructure to ferry the gas ashore.
Work on the project, being carried out by Sinopec, includes a gas processing that was expected to be complete last year, but has now been rolled over to December.
Ghana is hoping to produce around 140 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the Jubilee field to generate power and for export to neighbouring countries.
Jones said Tullow is awaiting approval from the Ghanaian authorities to begin the development of a second field, TEN, and hopes to pump the first oil in the second quarter of 2016.
