... in Five Years on New Wells

Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Ghana, which became Africa’s newest oil exporter in 2010, will boost crude output more than fivefold in the next five years as new wells come on stream, according to Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Fifi Kwetey.

Production will rise to 500,000 barrels a day, Kwetey said today at a conference in Accra, the capital. The country’s main Jubilee field pumped about 85,000 barrels a day at the end of last year, according to Tullow Oil Plc, the deposit’s developer.

Ghana missed oil production targets last year after Tullow delayed the ramp-up of Jubilee to fix mechanical faults. The company began shipping oil from the field in December 2010 and plans to increase daily production to 120,000 barrels next year from an average 90,000 barrels in 2012.

Tullow this month awarded Technip SA of France 100 million euros ($132 million) of contracts to manage the next phase of the Jubilee field’s development. Phase 1A will cost about $1.1 billion, Tullow said in January.

Phases 1A and 1B, which together with Phase 1 will target 500 million to 700 million barrels in estimated oil reserves, will enable London-based Tullow and its partners to increase production to about 240,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day after 2014, according to 2010 estimates from Tullow and Ghana National Petroleum Corp.

Anadarko, Kosmos

Tullow is working at Jubilee with GNPC, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Kosmos Energy Ltd. The partners also plan to invest at least $4 billion to develop the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme oilfields, known as TEN, off Ghana’s Atlantic coast. They’re appraising and designing the project for submission to the government in the third quarter, Tullow said last month.

Other international oil companies studying exploration prospects in Ghana, West Africa’s biggest economy after Nigeria, include Italy’s Eni SpA, which this month started drilling the Nunya-1X well on the offshore Keta block, according to its partner Afren Plc.

Russia’s OAO Lukoil is also searching for oil and gas off the nation’s coast, while Royal Dutch Shell Plc last month teamed up with Tullow to explore areas of the Atlantic basin including off West Africa, Shell’s Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said on Feb. 2.