Nigeria Content Online

Ghana is on track
to pump its first barrel of crude oil in December from total reserves
put at 1.6 billion barrels, vice president, John Dramani Mahama, said
on Tuesday.

The comments
reaffirmed its push to join the league of oil producers this year, and
the reserve estimate breaks from previous, more cautious forecasts, to
concur with a top-end figure given by operator, Tullow Oil Plc.

“In December this
year, Ghana will join the league of petroleum-producing nations as
commercial production begins in the Jubilee field,” Mahama told a
conference in Accra.

“Conservative
appraisal of the wells and available statistics based on credible
scientific findings indicate that the country holds potentially about
1.6 billion barrels of crude oil,” he added, updating previous official
forecasts of merely 800 million barrels – widely considered as overly
conservative.

Field operator,
Tullow, puts the upside potential of the core Jubilee Unit Area at one
billion barrels of crude, with the southeast section under appraisal at
a further 500 million.

Mahama said Ghana
could expect oil revenues on average to contribute seven percentage
points to annual gross domestic product, but warned it would not in
itself transform the fortunes of the country, a third of whose people
live in poverty.

“Ghana cannot see
the oil industry as a miracle wand to solve all problems. Rather, the
country can prudently use this resource to achieve significant economic
turn around,” he said, noting plans to base a nascent petrochemicals
sector on gas from the field.

Mahama stressed the
importance of ensuring local employment in the oil business, which has
typically been more capital than labour-intensive, and said oil revenue
management legislation aimed at ensuring transparency was before
parliament.

The field is due to
take four to six months to reach planned output of 120,000 barrels per
day – a level it will maintain for three years, Ghana’s energy minister
told Reuters in an interview last month.

Kosmos’ stake

Oil firm, Kosmos
Energy, said it had $350 million of extra credit to develop its assets
in Ghana’s Jubilee field and was committed to staying in Ghana, a week
after it said it cancelled an accord to sell its stake to ExxonMobil.

“The funds will
support Kosmos’ share of Jubilee Field phase one development, appraisal
of additional discoveries, and ongoing exploration activities on the
West Cape Three Points Block and adjacent Deepwater Tano Block offshore
Ghana,” it said in a statement issued in Dallas.

Ghana’s state
petroleum company, GNPC, a fierce opponent of the sale of the Kosmos
stake to ExxonMobil for what sources close to the deal put at $4
billion, last week reiterated its interest in the Kosmos assets.

But the Kosmos
statement noted the new funding was part of its plan to build on the
value of its assets and repeated that “the company will remain in
Ghana.”

Kosmos is backed by
private equity firms, Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Group LP. It is the
operator of the West Cape Three Points Block in which it holds a 30.875
percent interest and holds an 18 percent interest in the Deepwater Tano
block.