The expected increase of investments in the country’s oil and gas sector will inure to the benefit of international airlines operating in the country, Dick van Nieuwenhuyzen, Country Manager of Air France-KLM has said.

“In 2017, the oil and gas business will lift up. That will mean high-yield businessmen; people coming here to work for short periods. If I speak to the big oil companies, they say the industry will pick, up especially in the second half of 2017,” he told B&FT in Accra.

The expected increase in oil and gas activities will mean high revenue passengers for existing international airline and new entrants like Air France.

The country currently produces oil from two active fields, Jubilee and Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN). The TEN project derives its name from the three fields -- Tweneboa, Enyera and Ntomme -- and has a current scope to develop 300million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) over the lifetime of the field, which is approximately 20 years. Around 80% of this is oil and 20% gas.

Large commercial reserves were discovered in Sankofa, a deepwater non-associated gas reservoir located 60 km offshore in the Cape Three Points area. The Sankofa-Gye Nyame field, found by Italy’s Eni in 2009, has expected reserves of 162m barrels of oil and 1.07trn scf of non-associated gas. This field, which is expected to produce first oil in late 2017 and first gas in 2018.

The latest Oxford Business Group report notes that the field, which is being developed by Eni, Dutch firm Vitol Group and GNPC, is projected to be able to provide up to 1000 MW of domestic power.

This project is receiving one of the largest injection of foreign direct investment in Ghana’s history at US $7.9bn. It is expected to bring in US$2.3bn in revenues for the government.

“With two new fields scheduled to come on-line in the next two years and improved regulation through updated exploration and production laws making interactions more transparent for investors, prospects for oil and gas are trending positively,” The OBG said in its outlook for the energy sector.

Mr. Nieuwenhuyzen says Air France, which is expected to commence operations on February 28, 2017 will target businessmen in the oil and gas sector.

“The reason that Air France is coming is simply because KLM was full. The book-load factor on KLM is so high that actually, we are refusing passengers to travel KLM. So we had more capacity on the KLM side.

We want to fly Paris-Accra-Paris that is the idea. Ghana is very liberal with the fifth (5th) freedom right. KLM can go from Ghana to Lomé and back, the government has no problem with that. But with Air France, what we want is a non-stop product-Paris-Accra-Paris. If I am able to fill the plane as we project, there is absolutely no need to go beyond Ghana.”

Air France is the latest to announce plans to operate three weekly flights between Accra, Ghana and Paris–Charles de Gaulle, France starting on February 28, 2017. The flights will be operated on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

These flights will be operated by an Airbus A330 with a capacity of 208 seats until March 27, 2017 and then by a Boeing 777-200 with 312 seats and equipped with the latest new Air France travel cabins for the entire summer season.