Ghana Production To Average 200,000 BPD In 2017

Ghanaian oil production will average 200,000 barrels per day in 2017, despite a two-month shutdown at one of the small African nation’s major production facilities.

The Jubilee floating, production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) facility will go offline in September and October for repairs on a damaged turret, according to Mohammed Amin Adam, deputy secretary of energy for petroleum.

The Tullow-operated FPSO shut down operations in March-April 2016 as well, due to an unrelated technical problem at the 68,500-barrel-per-day facility.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s Sankofa field started production three months earlier than anticipated, according to an announcement from the project’s partners earlier this month.

Italian Eni holds a 44.44 percent stake in the project, which pumps 45,000 barrels of oil per day from the field in the ongoing first phase of the enterprise. By next year, the $7.9 billion Offshore Cape Three Points venture will also extract 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Gye Nyame reserve.

"ENI has launched production from the integrated oil and gas development project in the OCTP block, off Ghana's western coast, in just two and half years, and three months ahead of schedule," the company said in a statement to Reuters. The project will more than double gas output for the West African nation by adding 1,000 MW worth of production, the government says.

Ghana had sustained growth of at least 8 percent until 2013, partly due to the revenues from oil, but in recent years, Ghana has seen less income due to the plummeting price of the commodity coupled with a growing fiscal crisis.

On a potential bid to join the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to further Ghana’s strategic interests, Adam said: "Why would Ghana join OPEC when it is no longer as relevant as it used to be? The prices are so low and OPEC is not able to impact the market the way it used to."

By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com

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