Mr. Umberto Carrara, ENI’s Executive Vice President for sub-Sahara African Region, has paid a courtesy call on the Petroleum Minister, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, to further discuss progress of work on the Offshore Cape Three Points Sankofa Gas Project.
Endorsed by the World Bank and IFC, the OCTP Sankofa Gas Project will usher in Ghana’s third FPSO and is undoubtedly the biggest gas investment in the sub-region in recent times: making Ghana take a permanent seat in the league of hydrocarbon producing nations.
The project is being developed in two phases: the first phase involves construction of an FPSO and subsea facilities for oil production, while the second phase is to ensure development of the natural gas resource and its transportation to local gas markets.
Recoverable reserves are estimated at 162mmbls for oil and 1.07 TCF for gas. The projected total investment is about US$7.28billion and is expected to produce 60,000 bopd by 2017 and 180 MMScfd of Gas by 2018.
Mr. Umberto Carrara thanked Mr. Buah for the warm welcome and reassured him of ENI’s commitment to Ghana’s oil and gas industry, despite the current downturn in crude oil price that has made several Exploration and Production (E&P) companies slash tens of billions of dollars in capital spending.
Since last June, most international oil companies worldwide cut projects and laid-off workers due to a near-halving of oil prices — in order to boost their balance sheets and maintain dividend payouts to investors. On the other hand, Government of Ghana acting through Ministry of Petroleum has ensured that ongoing major projects in Ghana’s upstream industry such as the Tweneboa, Enyera, Ntomme (TEN) Project and OCTP Sankofa Gas Project are pursued despite the current turmoil in the oil and gas industry.
The TEN project operated by Tullow and its partners is also on course to deliver First Oil in August 2016 and First Gas in the third quarter of 2017. The discoveries are expected to deliver about 80,000 bopd and 60 mmscf of gas/day.