Tullow to Expand Jubilee Oil Project

Tullow Oil Plc, the U.K. explorer that will produce its first oil in Ghana this year, plans to decide on the Jubilee field production expansion off the African country’s coast in 2011 and 2012.

The company is targeting about 370 million barrels of reserves with the Jubilee phase 1 development, said Chief Financial Officer Ian Springett. The Jubilee total reserves are estimated between 500 million and 700 million barrels of oil.

Phase 1a will target about 80 million barrels and “we are working on that right now” with a possible investment decision to be made next year, Springett said today at RBC Capital Markets Oil and Gas Conference in London. A more extended phase, 1b, will be sanctioned in late 2011 or early 2012, he said.

London-based Tullow together with Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Kosmos Energy LLC and Ghana National Petroleum Corp. are investing about $3.35 billion to develop the Jubilee field. The first phase is expected to start pumping 120,000 barrels of oil a day in the first half of next year.