The Ministry of Energy will set up a technical team to work with oil and gas company Aker Energy to revive its offshore Pecan field development, after a final investment decision was postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

According to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Mines and Energy’s report on the 2021 budget estimates of the Ministry of Energy, the technical team will work with Aker Energy on a new plan of development for the field, given that many of the assumptions underpinning the existing plan of development have been altered by the impact of the pandemic.

Aker Energy, a subsidiary of Norwegian-based oil exploration and production firm Aker Energy AS, announced last year—after oil prices plummeted in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic—that a final investment decision for the Pecan project had been put on hold.

It added that it was working actively to confirm the feasibility of a phased field development by executing conceptual studies.

“The phased development of the Pecan field and the utilisation of a redeployed FPSO vessel will substantially reduce the CAPEX and, hence, reduce the breakeven cost,” the company said in a statement on June 5. “In addition, it will increase the possibility of reaching a commercially feasible project that will allow for an investment decision,” it added.

With the current vaccination programmes and recent improvement in the oil price, the company has “given indication of reviving its work programmes”, the select committee’s report revealed.

Aker Energy had planned to develop the Pecan field with a purpose-built FPSO (floating, production, storage and offloading vessel) connected to a subsea production system at 2,400 metres below sea level. However, the agreement for the FPSO was terminated last year together with the project’s suspension.

Aker Energy holds a 50 percent participating interest in the licence, with Lukoil Overseas Ghana Tano Limited (38 percent), Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (10 percent) and Fueltrade Limited (2 percent) as the other shareholders. The block holds discovered resources of between 450-550m barrels of oil equivalent.

The government is counting on projects such as Pecan to progress so as to help Ghana maintain a rising volume of oil production to support government revenue generation and the creation of a petroleum hub in the west of the country.