Ghana oil output to more than double by 2021

Accra, Ghana — 25 April 2013 – Ghana, West Africa’s second-biggest economy, expects oil production to more than double to 250,000 barrels a day by 2021 as output continues to rise at the Jubilee field, and other sites start pumping.

“The country has new crude discoveries at different stages of appraisal and development,” Nana Boakye Asafu-Adjaye, CEO of state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) said in an interview with Bloomberg News here. “At the Tullow Oil plc-operated Jubilee field, 60km off Ghana’s west coast, output has averaged 110,000 barrels a day over the last three months,” he added.

Oil displaced cocoa as Ghana’s second-most valuable export in 2012, with shipments worth $3 billion, according to the central bank. Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images
In the next “five to eight years we will be spending $20 billion” to develop Jubilee and other discoveries, Asafu-Adjaye said. Jubilee, which started output in December 2010, is Ghana’s lone crude-exporting oil field. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, pumped 1.8 million barrels a day in March.

Oil displaced cocoa as Ghana’s second-most valuable export in 2012, with shipments worth US$3 billion, according to the central bank. Gold remains the country’s top foreign-currency earner.

Kosmos Energy Limited also has a stake in the Jubilee field, while Tullow, Kosmos and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation  are developing the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme, or TEN, project.

“First oil from TEN could be in late 2016,” Asafu-Adjaye said. The site may have reserves of 245 million barrels and peak daily production is forecast at 76,000 barrels, he added.

Source: Bloomberg News. For more information, click here.