TULLOW Ghana is in discussion with the government to have rights to other areas within its Development and Producing Area (DPA), following its unsuccessful attempt to win any oil block in the recent licensing round.
Executive Vice President of the company, Kweku Awotwi said although there were some areas in its DPA for exploration, the oil company, would need permission from the government before it could move in.
“There are a number of areas in our Development and Producing Area (DPA) that we don’t have rights to so we are in actively discussing with government to see how we can bring them on,” he said.
Mr Awotwi was responding to a query on the company’s next action after it missed out on bid for the oil blocks, during an interaction with journalists on the sidelines of a Tullow media capacity building workshop in Accra.
The government, through the energy ministry, in October last year, started the maiden licensing round for six oil blocks out of which three were to go through a competitive bidding process.
Although the company was not shortlisted among successful bidders announced by the Ministry of Energy on July 2, 2019 for two of the three oil blocks offered, Mr Awotwi said there were other opportunities to explore.
“Even within the company’s plan of development there are other targets so Jubilee and TEN we have over a billion barrels of resources which we have to bring into reserve, but there is a lot of opportunity,” he said.
The two-day workshop which ended on Wednesday was the Accra edition of the Tullow Ghana’s maiden capacity building programme aimed at enhancing the knowledge of journalists in the oil and gas sector to aid their reportage.
Facilitated by Rig World International Services Limited and Aberdeen Drilling School and Well Control Training Centre, it was attended by about 20 participants drawn from both print and electronic media.
Mr Awotwi, touching on Tullow Oil PLC’s new oil discovery in its Jethro-1 exploration well, offshore in Guyana, he said it had a minimum of 100 million barrels with the initial discovery suggesting it was in commercial quantities.
The discovery, he said had widened the employment opportunity for the Tullow Ghana employees as some experts would be engaged in the exploration.
“It creates more opportunity for Ghanaians. We already have some of our own Ghanaian geo-scientists that were in London last week, who are going to be part of that exercise. The company moved the rig of Ghana to Guyana but kept the workforce from Ghana,” he said.
On performance, he said it had been stabilising slowly over time.
“Last year we did about 150,000 barrels a day on average and this year we hope to do close to about 160,000. The idea is to increase that even further but the capacity is 180,000. This year we expect to do better than last year. The idea is to continuously look for improvement for Ghana,” he said.
He said although the company had had some operational challenges, they were being addressed, saying, “In the beginning of the year we set some ambitious targets and we hope to achieve them.”
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
