Two major offshore oil discoveries in Ghana have made exploration in the West African nation less risky and will be followed by further finds, an official with the state-run GNPC oil firm said on Thursday.

"There is no doubt that the discovery of Jubilee and Odum have significantly de-risked Ghana's hydrocarbon potential," Theo Ahwireng, manager of geophysics for the Ghana National Petroleum Corp., told the Africa Upstream 2008 oil conference in Cape Town.

Ahwireng added that there were a handful of other discoveries in Ghana that had yet to be fully appraised.

Project sanction for the first phase of Jubilee, considered the larger prize of the two discoveries, is expected in the fourth quarter, with production targeted to begin in 2010.

Jubilee is believed to hold between 500 million and 1.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Dallas-based Kosmos Energy, GNPC and a handful of other companies hold stakes in the development. (Reporting by Paul Simao; editing James Jukwey)