Ghana Jubilee partners flare 1.7 billion Cubic feet of gas since June

0
Jubilee Gas Flaring
Gas Flaring

by Justice Lee Adoboe

Accra, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) — Ghana?s Jubilee oil partners have flared at least 1.7 billion Standard Cubic Feet of Gas (2.7 billion scfg) since June, Charles Darku General Manager (GM) of Tullow Ghana Ltd, disclosed here Thursday.

Jubilee Gas Flaring
Gas Flaring

This, he said, followed a permit received from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June for a limited volume of gas to be flared from the Jubilee field to allow for oil production.

?We received the permit to flare 500 million scfg per month since June and, having started late in June and with July, August and September fully flared, we should have done about 1.7 billion scfg by the end of September,? Darku explained.
He made this known while addressing stockbrokers, media and other stakeholders at the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE)?s Facts Behind the Figures program.

Gas flaring remained the only option to ensure that oil production did not decrease in volume, as the Ghana gas infrastructure expected to receive natural gas from the Jubilee field was still not ready.

Earlier, the decision was taken to carry out a by-pass on the Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah vessel to the gas processing plant as the wells into which gas was being re-injected on the Jubilee field were getting used up.

?However, after all the components had been imported, we realized that there was the need for a heater to be installed at a point in Takoradi (218 kms west of the capital) on the bypass infrastructure, which will take 22 months to do; so Ghana National Gas Company decided to rather go ahead with finishing the gas processing plant,? the GM explained.

He explained that, for that reason, there was then the need to flare some gas to ease the pressure on the operators to carry out production.
Tullow, operators of the Jubilee field, had targeted to average 100,000 barrels of oil per day (100,000 bopd) production this year.

?We are happy to say that we are on course, with production reaching 103.000 bopd on the Jubilee field,? Mark Macfarlane, deputy General Manager of Tullow Ghana, said.

According to him, the gas flaring had aided the operators to produce gas optimally to meet the targets set for the year.

Macfarlane said development of the Tweneboa Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) field was also on course to meet both the mid-2016 deadline and on the 4.0 billion budget approved by the partners and government of Ghana.

?TEN development is a capital intensive project and 4.0 billion dollars means you are spending dollars per minute for four years,? the deputy General Manager pointed out.

He however said the development would be completed in time for first oil to be delivered by the middle of 2016.
George Cazenove, Media and Communications Manager for Tullow Oil plc, who also addressed the function, explained that Tullow pulled out of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mozambique due to unsuccessful exploration.
He said although some of the wells in these countries yielded oil and others yielded gas, these were not in commercial quantities, hence the decision to pull out.

?We are very proud of Tullow because they are the biggest listed company on the Accra bourse,? Ekow Afedzie, Deputy Managing Director of the GSE, said.
The total market capitalization of the GSE is 64 billion Ghana Cedis or 21.3 billion US dollars while Tullow?s market capitalization on the bourse is 32 billion cedis or 10.7 billion dollars. Enditem

Source: Justice Lee Adoboe

Send your news stories to [email protected] Follow News Ghana on Google News

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here