Jubilee gas to be pumped back

Natural gas produced alongside first oil from the Jubilee field will be pumped back into the well, contrary to recent expectations of gas being exploited before oil.

Tullow Oil Chief Operations Officer Stuart Wheaton said: “Associated gas from oil production in Jubilee will have to be injected back into the well until infrastructure for utilising gas is ready.”

Oil production, expected to commence towards the end of this year, will produce the equivalent of 10 times as much in cubic feet of natural gas as daily oil output. Initial oil output is expected to be about 60,000 barrels per day (bpd), ramping to 120,000 after about six months.

In a presentation at the just-ended Ghana Oil and Gas Summit, Wheaton disclosed that eight oil producer wells, and six water and two gas injectors have been drilled with one producer well to be drilled post-first oil.

In recent times, official statements have been indicating that Ghana will exploit its Jubilee gas resources ahead of first oil, with Energy Minister Dr. Joe Oteng-Adjei reportedly affirming this on the sidelines of an international conference on oil and gas in Trinidad and Tobago.

With a zero gas-flaring policy, the country hopes to utilise all associated gas from oil exploitation in the production of electric power, mainly, as well as for domestic use and other industrial uses such as fertiliser production.

Natural gas output from Jubilee is expected to be around 1.2 million cfd, with half of that injected back into the oil reservoir to boost pressure while the remaining 600,000 cfd is channelled through a pipeline attached to the flange of the FPSO (floating processing and offloading) vessel to an onshore gas processing plant to be sited at Bonyere in the Western Region.

The installation of the FPSO is expected to begin in June after arriving from a Singaporean shipbuilding yard, but infrastructure for gas has not yet commenced.

Experts at the Ghana Oil and Gas summit said the gas infrastructure may take a little longer in being developed.

The Ghana Summit, organised by the CWC Group brought together international industry players who deliberated on how best to make Ghana’s oil industry a success story.

Experts said the country needs to focus more attention on the development of credible local content that would see Ghanaians participating more meaningfully in the emerging oil and gas industry.

Dr. Oteng-Adjei said: “The active involvement of Ghanaians in the oil and gas exploration, development, production and utilisation through local content and local participation has become a major policy issue.

“Many of our people see the oil discovery as the last opportunity for achieving the national prosperity that has eluded our nation all this while.”

Participants at the summit said a clearly defined local content is critical to the country’s nascent hydrocarbon industry if Ghana is to emerge as a successful oil economy.

The Managing Director of GNPC, Nana Asafu-Ajaye, said Ghana’s concept of resource nationalism is to get Ghanaians participating at all levels of the oil and gas industry - with the indigenes controlling about 80 percent of the resource and ultimately controlling about 90 percent.

Source: B&FT