Ghana’s first major oil field should produce enough gas to generate more than 600MW of electricity in the power-starved country, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation’s (GNPC) exploration chief said.
The Jubilee oilfield should come onstream by late 2010 as planned and the schedule is unaffected by the recent fall in oil prices, Thomas Manu, GNPC’s director of exploration and production, told Reuters in an interview this week.
The field, operated by Britain’s Tullow Oil in partnership with private equity-backed Kosmos Energy and Ghana’s GNPC, is scheduled to start pumping at a rate of about 120 000 barrels per day (bpd), rising to about 250 000 (bpd) within two years.
”Currently, the price fall hasn’t impacted on our operations at all. Everything is going on as planned,” Manu said.
”So far as the prices stay above the cost of finding, development and production, it will still be beneficial, even when oil prices have gone below that level, you’ll have to make a judgement, ” he added.
”If you pull out how much will you lose? Or if you continue production how much loss will you cut?” he said.
Benchmark US oil futures reached a record high of over $147 per barrel in July 2008 but traded at about $54 on Thursday.
”The most important thing is that by the time we start pumping oil … prices will be above cost,” Manu said.
He did not give a figure for production and exploration costs for the Jubilee field, where oil was discovered in mid-2007 as international oil prices surged.
”For full field development, the companies and GNPC would make investments close to $6,5-billion, the process is progressing steadily and we are on target for the first oil in the last quarter of 2010,” Manu said. — Reuters