Page 4 - AfrOil Week 27

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Ghana gets going
Awarding two of three competitively licensed blocks in its round, Ghana has got off to a slow but steady start
GHana
WHat:
Two blocks have been awarded in Ghana’s offshore.
WHy:
The west African state
is eager to lock in
more exploration and production for the future.
WHat nExt:
ExxonMobil and AMNi should get going with activity this year, while Aker Energy is closing in on an fiD.
GhANA has awarded two blocks under its rst licence round, putting the country on the path to future expansion. A competitive licence round is a rst for the country, which passed legislation approving such an o ering in August 2016.
It was launched on October 15, 2018. Accord- ing to the plan for the licensing round, the nego- tiations of the contracts are due to be wrapped up by August 30. Ghana began producing from the Saltpond eld in 1978, but more recently the country has been dominated by the Tullow Oil- led Jubilee eld, which began producing in 2010 a er being discovered in 2007.
e question of competitive rounds versus direct negotiations is a vexed one. Companies o en claim to prefer the latter, as it gives them more leeway – and tends to be less competitive, allowing them to get better terms. Given the failure of Ghana to reach terms on WB05 and WB06, direct o erings are clearly not always the answer.
WB02
Nigeria’s First Exploration and Petroleum and Elandel Energy (Ghana) were awarded Block WB02, a spokesman for the Ghanaian Ministry of Energy was quoted as saying.
is block covers 1,110 square km, with water depths ranging from 50 to 1,100 metres. is is close to Eni’s Sankofa and Gye-Nyame elds, a yer on the licence round said. e US’ Vanco has previously carried out studies on this area.
WB03
Eni and Vitol have won the rights to Block WB03 with 70% and 30% stakes respectively. e two companies are also working together on the Sankofa and Gye Nyame project.
Block WB03 is in the Tano Basin, Eni said, in medium deepwater. e Italian company will be the operator and it commented this win would allow it to consolidate its presence in Ghana further. In addition to Eni and Vitol, Ghana National Petroleum Corp. (GNPC) and a local company will also have stakes – which will be worked out in the next phase, that of contract nalisation.
e new block is around 50 km from the John Agyekum Kufuor oating production, storage and o oading (FPSO) unit, which is producing on the Sankofa eld. Should discov- eries be made in Block WB03, Eni said there could be an opportunity to further exploit this
existing infrastructure.
WB03 covers 1,380 square km, with water
depths ranging from 800 to 2,800 metres. Rus- sia’s Lukoil drilled the Lynx-1 well on this block in 2014. e Petroleum Commission reported that this well had proved a working petroleum system in the area.
e Sankofa and Gye Nyame development areas lie on CTP Block 4, where Eni also has exploration areas. Eni and Vitol have 42.469% and 33.975% stakes respectively in this locality. ey started working on this rst block in May 2008, with rst oil achieved in July 2017 and gas starting a year later.
In May this year Eni announced a gas and condensate find in its CTP Block 4, with the Akoma-1X well. is was drilled 12 km north- west of the FPSO site, in 350 metres of water. It found 15.6-18.4bn cm of gas and 18-20mn bar- rels of condensate. At the time, the company said this could be put into production via a subsea tie- back to the FPSO, in order to extend production.
On declaring the Akoma discovery, Eni said gross production was 60,000 barrels of oil equiv- alent per day (boepd). As of July, this has risen to 70,000 boepd, it said. Government gures put 2018 production at 29,500 bpd, with 1.13mn cm per day of non-associated gas.
seismic
e primary seismic supporter of the licence round was PGS, which carried out the MegaS- urvey, with the expectation that data would be available in the third quarter of this year. e company noted that six blocks had been included in the licence round, with three avail- able via competitive tendering. Two were set aside for direct negotiations – Blocks WB05 and WB06 – and Block WB01 for GNPC.
PGS said 57 applications had been received from 16 companies for the blocks. Of these, 14 were invited to apply for Blocks WB02, WB03 and WB04. According to reports in the Ghana- ian press, bidders included ExxonMobil, BP, China National O shore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), Qatar Petroleum, Aker Energy, Cairn Energy, Global Petroleum, Sasol, Equinor, harmony Oil and Gas, Tullow Oil, Total and Kosmos Energy.
BP and ExxonMobil were said to be applying for the two direct negotiation blocks but pulled out before sealing the deal. ere were said to have been no bids for Block WB04, which con- tains the Dzata eld.
DRillinG:
Two wells were drilled
in 1970 that found hydrocarbons. An Amoco Petroleum-led effort discovered the saltpond eld and Volta Petroleum found the North Tano eld, in the Tano Basin. Onshore wells have largely disappointed.
P4
w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 27 09•July•2019