Mr Charles Darku, Managing Director of Tullow Ghana

TEN lead operator welcomes ITLOS ruling

Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu Business News Sep - 25 - 2017 , 10:48

The lead operator of the Jubilee fields, Tullow Ghana, has welcomed the ruling by the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg, Germany last Saturday.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic shortly after the ruling, the Managing Director of Tullow Ghana, Mr Charles Darku, said the ruling on the maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire made it clear that the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) and other fields were not affected.

Satisfaction

“It also makes it clear that we can proceed with further development of the TEN fields in Ghana and sends the right signal to the investor community and we at Tullow are pleased with the decision,” he said.

In a statement issued after the ruling, Tullow said it would now work with the government to put in place the necessary permits to allow it to continue development drilling in the TEN fields, saying: “Tullow expects to resume drilling around the end of the year, which will allow production from the TEN fields to start to increase towards the floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) design capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd).”

Tullow CEO

The Chief Executive Officer of Tullow Oil PLC, Mr Paul McDade, was quoted in the statement as saying: “Tullow looks forward to continuing to work constructively with the governments of both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire following the conclusion of this process.”

Development

Mr McDade said while the TEN fields had performed well during the period of the drilling moratorium, “we can now restart work on the additional drilling as part of the TEN fields’ plan of development and take the fields towards their full potential”.

There are 11 wells to be drilled to reach the full plan of 24 wells.

The TEN Project is Ghana’s second major oil development, after Jubilee. The TEN blocks are situated in the Deepwater Tano Basin, around 60 kilometres off the coast of the Western Region.

Tweneboa is non-associated gas, Ntomme has oil and gas deposits, while Enyenra has oil deposits only. They are under a joint operation, with Tullow Oil Ghana as the lead operator with the working interest of 47.175 per cent, with Kosmos Energy Ghana and Anadarko Petroleum having 17 per cent each, while Petro SA keeps 3.825 per cent.

Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) represents Ghana’s unified interest of 15 per cent.

First oil from the embattled field was realised in August 2016, with a facility capacity of around 80,000bopd expected in 2017.

The TEN fields lie just 20 kilometres from the Tullow Oil-operated Jubilee project.