The lead operator of the Jubilee Field, Tullow Ghana, and a technical team are making frantic efforts to restore gas supply to the onshore Atuabo Gas Processing Plant in the Ellembelle District in the Western Region due to a technical problem.
Temporarily, operations at the gas processing plant at Atuabo has come to a halt as there is no export of gas from Jubilee and Tweneboa, Enyera and Ntome (TEN) fields for power generation in the eastern and western power enclaves.
The inability of the vessel to export gas from the Jubilee and TEN fields to the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant has implications for power supply, given that the country now relies heavily on gas-powered thermal power production to feed the energy system.
The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah has the capacity to produce 120,000 barrels of oil per day, and produces 160 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.
However, as a result of the technical challenge, it is unable to export gas for shore processing.
The offshore premier production platform experienced a gas system trip, and the technical team is working to identify the root cause of the situation, an official statement said yesterday.
Statement
According to a joint statement by the national oil and gas companies, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas), at about 4:30 p.m. yesterday, the Jubilee Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel experienced a technical issue.
The situation, it said, temporarily affected gas export to the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant in the Ellembelle District in the Western Region.
The operator, Tullow Ghana, the statement said, began making efforts to identify the root cause of the problem in order to implement the necessary corrective measures and restore gas supply to the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant as quickly and safely as possible.
The technical team, it said, were working with the operator to resolve the issue. The statement said that the oil production system on the FPSO remained unaffected and continued to operate steadily.
FPSO
The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah is a floating production, storage and offloading vessel operating in the Jubilee oil fields offshore Ghana.
Named after Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, it has been a vital part of the country's oil production infrastructure since its inception in 2010.
