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| Ghana Urged To Stay Realistic On Oil Benefits |
| News - Ghana News | |||
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Ghana should set reasonable expectations for the benefits it will receive from commercial oil production, on track to start up late this year, the local head of energy firm Tullow Oil has said. “Ghana does not yet have an oil industry.... it only has an oil field,” Dai Jones told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy conference that included an exhibition of Ghanaian and foreign companies competing for oil sector services contracts.
Tullow is the operator of Ghana’s 800 million-1.2 billion barrel offshore jubilee field, which is expected to launch Ghana into the club of West African oil-exporter nations when output starts at the end of the year.
Ghana’s government is hoping the field will drive 20 per cent economic growth in 2011 and help lift the country out of the low-income bracket of countries such as Afghanistan and Haiti and into the middle-income ranks of Iran or Egypt.
“We are concerned especially when the officials compare Ghana to Nigeria and Angola, which have several oil fields and have an oil industry. So we need to manage the expectations well,” Jones said.
Initial output from Jubilee is expected to start in the fourth quarter, Jones confirmed. Initial production will reach 120,000 barrels per day, rising to 150,000 bpd within months and potentially peaking at 25,000 bpd by 2013.
He added that Tullow has already contracted $ 65 million worth of logistical services from local firms.
The jubilee field, located in the Western Region, is split between the Deepwater Tano and West Cape Three point’s licenses, which are being developed by a group of investors.
Tullow holds 34.7 per cent shares in jubilee, Kosmos controls 23.49 per cent; EO Group has 1.75 per cent; and Ghana National Petroleum Corp. Has 13.75 per cent.
Kosmos, based in Dallas, is currently in talks with the government to offload its shares to the latter.
Ghana will become one of the world’s top 50 oil producers when the West African nation begins to pump crude oil from the jubilee field in the last quarter of 2010.
The deposit will be developed with a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel which is expected to arrive in the country by the end of the month from Singapore.
The vessel, launched in Singapore by the First Lady Mrs. Naadu Mills, a couple of weeks ago, has been christened “FPSO Kwame Nkrumah.”
Jubilee is Tullow’s largest project. The company is also focusing on exploration in Uganda.
Source: Ghana Gov
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