Energy experts worried, as FPSO fails to produce crude to full capacity

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By Kwabena Adu Koranteng

The failure of Ghana?s Floating Production storage Offloading Vessel to produce crude oil to the targeted 120,000 barrel capacity has left energy experts in the country sensing foul play and further wondering what might be happening on the oil rig.
FPSOIn its latest report, the Public Interest and Accountability committee noted that in spite of the significant progress made, the Jubilee field has not hit the FPSO full capacity of 120,000 barrels per day. Due to the constraints imposed largely by the handling of associated gas.
It mentioned some of the major progress on the Jubilee field as the one billion Jubilee Phase 1A expansion project consisting of five production wells and three water injectors designed to increase production and recover additional reserves. Three of the Phase 1A production wells were completed and brought up stream during the 2012 2013 review period. This coupled with the successful outcome of Phase1 well maintenance programme in 2012 led to an increase in the daily average production from 71,998 barrels of oil per day in December 2012 to 99,685 barrels per day in December 2013. However this significant progress the Jubilee fields is still struggling to meet it targeted production level.
Mr Yaw Owusu Addo, member of PIAC in charge of communication in an interview said it will be difficult to record the actual production level on the FPSO since there is no independent flow meter from government fixed at the drilling point of production and the offloading point to be compared to that of the other partners.
So how can we independently verify the real or actual production level on the FPSO when government of Ghana has been refused access to fix its on flow meter? We can only rely on the data from Tullow and other partners.
According to Mr Owusu Addo, when government attempted to fix its flow meter on the FPSO, it was told by the partners that the system was interfering with the operations of the vessels which forced them to remove it. ?I am not saying that they are not giving us the right data on production level but you can also not entirely rely only on records from the jubilee partners. Yu can?t blame them because when they were building the vessel in Singer pore they said they did not consider government fixing a flow meter in addition to what they planned and you see it?s a huge investment that costs much so you can?t compromise it. We hope that this will be considered in the development of the New FPSO for the TEN projects?.
The total volume of crude oil lifted by the Ghana group in 2013 from the Jubilee field was 6,793,449 barrels of oil representing 19.09% of total production for the period under review. This was slightly higher than the government of Ghana share of 18.64%, made up of 5% royalties and 13.64% carrying and participating interest in the jubilee project due to stock spill over as reported above.
In an interview with the head of marketing of Kosmos Energy in Ghana, Mr George Sarpong in a reaction, he said the issue is very technical and that efforts are underway to rectify, he said the injection of gas into the drilling holes during production due to the restriction of the law to flair the gas was one of the factors reducing production levels. An official of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Eric Eric Pwadura also in an interview said though GNPC is aware of the factors limiting production to capacity he would not disclose them. On her part the public Relation officer of Tullow oil Ghana , Bernice Natue declined to comment on the issue citing internal conditions.

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