New company to produce water for offshore oil operations
Construction of a water facility to produce underground water to support the country’s offshore oil operations is expected to commence at Axim.
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The move is to halt the current importation of water from neighbouring countries at a high cost to support the offshore oil operations which require large volumes of water daily.
A group of Ghanaian companies have pooled their resources and have formed a company known as the Offshore Water Services Ltd (OWSL) to undertake the project, with its membership drawn mainly from Ghanaian companies in the Ghana Oil and Gas Service Providers Association (GOGSPA).
Water is one of the very important ingredients required for various purposes during drilling. However, the available volume of water required by the jubilee operations and other fields is said to be woefully inadequate to meet offshore demands.
The project, which would be sited on a five-acre plot, is in partnership with the host community, and upon completion, it will have a storage capacity of producing 10,000 cubic metres at a daily delivery rate of 5,000 cubic metres.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic, the Executive Director of the Ghana Oil and Gas Service Providers Association (GOGSPA), Mr Nuetey Adzeman, said to meet the demands, supply vessels were left with no other choice than to lift water from neighbouring countries.
The twin-city of Sekondi/Takoradi, he said, was better placed to supply water to the offshore operations.
However, the demand to satisfy the needs of domestic consumers left little or nothing for offshore operations.
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“As a result of water shortage in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis, supply vessels go to Cote d’Ivoire to lift water to service the offshore demands at a very high cost to the government of Ghana and the international oil companies,” he said.
That, he said, defeated the spirit of promoting local content and local participation in petroleum activities as prescribed previously in the Petroleum Exploration and Production Act, 1984 (PNDC Law 84) and now Petroleum (Local Content and Local Participation) Regulations 2013 (L.I 2204).
He said the construction and drilling aspects of the project would start in January 2014 and the facility inaugurated at the beginning of the second quarter of 2014.
This project is intended to complement the efforts of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in the delivery of water by taking the pressure of supplying to the offshore industry and rather enable them to concentrate on servicing domestic users.
The project, he said, when completed, would create wealth for stakeholders and employment for the community.