TEN project remains on track — Tullow

Tullow Oil says its Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) Field project offshore Ghana, remains on track and will start producing oil next year and deliver significant cash flow.

The oil exploration and producing firm also said it was trimming capital spending in the face of depressed prices, to $1.2 to $1.4 billion next year from $1.9 billion in 2015.

The firm’s Vice President for Africa, Tim O’Hanlon, said these yesterday at the Africa Oil Week conference organised by Global Pacific & Partners, in Cape Town.

Additionally, he said the firm hopes to get a production license this year in Uganda, the East African country where Tullow discovered oil in 2006.

Chief Executive Aidan Heavey told Reuters the firm hopes to make a final investment decision on the Ugandan project in 2017 with the first oil flowing in 2020.

“You need a pipeline route firmed down and then you need to get FID (final investment decision). So FID probably in early 2017 and then three years later, you would have first oil,” he said.

The pipeline route to move oil from landlocked Uganda to the Indian Ocean has not yet been determined.

It is recalled that in 2007, Tullow drilled two deepwater wells offshore Ghana discovering the massive Jubilee field– its largest ever discovery and the beginnings of proving up a second new major oil province.

2008 to 2009 was its next phase of growth with a major focus on Africa, based on delivering first oil in Ghana in 2010. Following the success of the Jubilee field discovery, the partners in Ghana embarked upon an exploration programme to find the next major deepwater field.

In March 2009, the Eirik Raude rig successfully drilled the Tweneboa-1 wildcat well in the Deepwater Tano licence, around 20 km west of Tullow’s Jubilee field and some 45 km offshore from the Ghana mainland.

This initial discovery was followed up by a series of further successful appraisal and exploration wells which resulted in the discovery of the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) field.

The TEN project is expected to deliver first oil with a plateau production rate of 80,000 barrels of oil per day.