Tullow Oil to spend $1.5b in Ghana’s oil fields, others this year
Tullow Oil Plc, the majority shareholder in Ghana’s Jubilee oil fields, says its capital expenditure for the year 2011 will be around $1.5 billion.
The UK oil explorer indicates that oil wells in Ghana as well as other significant wells in West Africa are expected to receive a substantial share of this expenditure.
“Capital expenditure for 2011 is expected to be in the region of US$1.5 billion”, said Tullow in an Interim Management Statement (IMS) copied to ghanabusinssnews.com on May 12, 2011.
It added, “Major development decisions are to be made for Enyenra/Tweneboa and Jubilee and a number of significant wells with basin opening potential in West Africa and South America are drilled.”
The forward programme includes well tests on both fields and two additional Enyenra appraisal wells, it says.
The company will release its half yearly Trading Statement and Operational Update on July 5, 2011 to give specific spending for its licensed operation oil fields.
Meanwhile, oil producing company Kosmos Energy, in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission has indicated that it will make available an amount of $400 million to fund its activities in the oil fields in Ghana this year.
According to Tullow, who has increased its reserves based lending facility by $500 million to $3.0 billion in April 2011, development planning work has continued in parallel with appraisal drilling and a combined Plan of Development is expected to be submitted to the Ghana government early 2012.
Strong production growth is forecast as production significantly ramps up at Jubilee.
“Plateau production of 120,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) is expected to be reached in July as the remaining four production wells are completed and brought on line”, said Tullow as gross production from the Jubilee field has increased to over 70,000 bopd from five wells following first oil production at the end of 2010.
The company’s Net Debt as at April 30, 2011, before receipt of the Uganda farm down proceeds, was approximately $2.1 billion with unutilised debt capacity of approximately $900 million, it said.
In an earlier trading statement on January 27, 2011, Tullow spent 10% of its $3.1 billion budget for the first oil production in Ghana.
By Ekow Quandzie