COMPANY PROFILE
2015
Ten Project
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Harnessing oil potential in offshore Ghana Editorial: Tim Hands
Located 20 kilometres west of Tullow Oil’s Jubilee field in the Deepwater Tano licence, the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) fields comprise the Tweneboa, Enyenra, and Ntomme discoveries in offshore Ghana, in water depths ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 metres. The TEN Cluster Development is a trio of discoveries made in the Deepwater Tano Block, known separately as Tweneboa, Enyenra, and Ntomme. Many partners make up its ownership, including Kosmos Energy and Andarko who each have an 18% working interest, Sabre Oil & Gas Holdings Ltd with a 4.05% working interest and, primarily, Tullow Oil plc, which has a 49.95% working interest in the project and also acts as its operator. The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation completes
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the list of involved parties with its 10% carried interest. Founded in 1985, Tullow Oil is among the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in Europe and boasts a focused portfolio of world-class assets. A leading independent oil and gas, exploration and production group, its primary focus is on finding oil in Africa and the Atlantic Margins, with the company signing its first licence in Senegal in 1986 and doubling in size in 2004 with the acquisition of
Energy Africa. In Uganda, Tullow has discovered over 1bn barrels of oil to date in the Lake Albert Basin and has seen success with its recent basin opening discoveries in Ghana, Uganda and, in 2012, its first onshore discovery in Kenya.
THE TEN CLUSTER March 2009 brought the first discovery of what would later come to be known as the TEN Cluster, and was made by the Eirik Raude semi-sub drill rig. Through its drilling in Turonian
TEN Cluster Development turbidite sands, in water depths of more than 1,100 metres, the team discovered a gas condensate reservoir named Tweneboa-1. Drilled to a total depth of 3,593 metres, the discovery well encountered 21 metres net pay of a highly pressured light hydrocarbon accumulation, bolstered later in the same month when the well was deepened to 3,938 metres, and another four metres of highly pressured oil-bearing sands were found. An over-pressured zone also formed part of this second discovery, which limited further progress, although this was overcome in January 2010, when, in more than 1,300 metres of water, the Atwood Hunter rig discovered an oil reservoir and two separate gas condensate reservoirs. In December of the same year, two more condensate pools were discovered by the Deepwater
Millennium. The first find at the Enyenra field was made by the Sedco 702 in July 2010, in water depths of more than 1,400 metres. Exploratory drilling had begun in June that year, before the Owo-1 well, drilling to a total depth of 3,890m, encountered a gross vertical reservoir interval of 154 metres, containing 53 metres of net oil pay. This discovery, made in two zones of stacked Turonian aged sands, uncovered good quality light oil, between 33 and 36 degrees API Gravity, the industry standard used to determine and classify the density of oil. Then, in the final months of 2010, located in depths of 1730 metres and some six kilometres southeast of Tweneboa 2, the Deepwater Millennium discovered the Ntomme gascondensate field. Drilled into an area of weaker seismic response, the well successfully encountered
39 metres of net oil pay. 2011 and 2012 brought significant progress in the programme of appraisal drilling and flow testing of the TEN fields, which subsequently led to the submission of the Plan of Development to the Minister of Energy in early November 2012. Approval for this was granted in May 2013, with Tullow’s CEO Aidan Heavey expressing his own optimism surrounding the project in a press statement: “I am delighted that the TEN Project Development Plan has been approved by the government of Ghana. This is an important project that will give Ghana its second major offshore development. The government of Ghana [has] shown faith in Tullow and its partners again and has set us a number of important targets around local content and supply chain. I have every confidence that we will meet these targets and look forward to
Š Tullow Oil Plc
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working with the Government of Ghana and with our partners to deliver the TEN Project.�
THE FPSO VESSEL The project is predicted to cost US$4.9 billion and this approval was vital in paving the way for Tullow and its partners to proceed with the development of its discoveries, and to define the final schedule and capital programme. Delivery of the first oil from the cluster is scheduled for mid-2016,
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and will be followed by a steady increase up to an eventual facility capacity production rate of 80,000 bpd. Development of the TEN Project has really been allowed to take shape since this 2013 milestone, and a vital component of this is the drilling and completion of up to 24 development wells which will be connected through subsea infrastructure to a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO), moored in approximately 1,500 metres of
water. This core aspect of the project is to be undertaken by Semcorp Marine, who proudly announced that its subsidiaries Sembmarine SLP and Jurong Shipyard Pte Ltd had secured the offshore energy related contracts, valued at a combined US$174.3 million. The FPSO is to be provided by Japan’s MODEC Offshore Production Systems (Singapore) Pte Ltd, which has in turn contracted Jurong Shipyard to complete the repair and conversion of a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) into an FPSO vessel, representing the twenty-second conversion project of this nature on which the two parties have collaborated. When completed in late 2015, the TEN
TEN Project
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© Tullow Oil Plc Development FPSO will have a production and treatment capacity of 80,000 bpd of crude oil, 65,000 bpd of produced water, and 180 MMscfd of gas, with an on-board storage capacity of 1.7 million barrels. This will be Ghana’s second FPSO and will be fashioned from the Centennial Jewel trading tanker, whose arrival in the Jurong Shipyard in Singapore at the end of 2013 represented a significant landmark in the TEN Cluster’s development. Here, work was able to begin on its eventual conversion into the FPSO to be used for the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme Project, and saw the vessel navigated into the port with the help of a number of tug boats. The conversion has an estimated completion time-scale of two years, and will join Ghana’s
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I have every confidence that we will meet these targets and look forward to working with the Government of Ghana and with our partners to deliver the TEN Project”
FPSO ranks alongside its first undertaking, Kwame Nkrumah currently producing crude oil from the Jubilee Field, which straddles both the West Cape Three Points and Deepwater Tano blocks. This particular TEN Development FPSO will be moored via external turret and operated by MODEC, and will host multiple subsea tiebacks from the project’s three principal reservoirs. It is a significant milestone for MODEC to assist Tullow and its partners to develop a world class oil field. And serves to strengthen MODEC’s involvement in the development of oil exploration and production infrastructure in West Africa, with president and CEO Toshiro Miyazaki adding, “MODEC is very proud to have been selected by the TEN field partners and GNPC to provide and operate the FPSO
TEN Cluster Development for TEN, a world class facility in a world class field. We are equally pleased to be a part of the team that will provide a needed energy resource for the benefit of the people of the Republic of Ghana.” Progress was reported to be at around 30% in mid-2014, and continues apace to remain on schedule today. Mid-2014 was a particularly fruitful time for the project, which currently stands at around the halfway mark of its completion, and very much on track to produce its first oil in the summer of 2016. France’s Vallourec, the world leader in premium tubular solutions primarily serving the energy market, was selected in May to supply its premium line pipes and welding services, and will provide Subsea 7 with seamless
offshore line-pipe. Dominique Richardot, Managing Director of Vallourec’s Pipe and SURF activities, declared: “Vallourec’s involvement in several parts of the TEN project demonstrates our ability to generate added value for our clients through flexibility, synergies and close cooperation.” Only a couple of months prior, Aibel Thailand had cut the first steel for topside modules for the TEN project at its subcontractor Deeline Construction Co. Ltd.’s fabrication shop in Rayong, Thailand. This contract was signed in February last year, and will see Aibel Thailand delivering seven modules with a weight of 9,400 tons to the FPSO vessel. W ith Ghana’s national oil firm expecting to pump 190,000 barrels of crude per day by
the end of 2016, between them the Jubilee Field and TEN cluster will shoulder an enormous responsibility in achieving this. Head of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) Alex Mould told Reuters exactly how this target would be hit: “By the end of 2016, we should be producing something close to 60,000 bpd from TEN, and we should be looking at 130,000 barrels per day from Jubilee. We won’t hit the 130,000 bpd early next year, most likely towards the end of the year.” Oil is crucial to Ghana, and the TEN cluster looks set to play a huge role in restoring fiscal stability, with oil revenue central to budget projections and total crude output set to be above 200,000 bpd by late 2016
© Tullow Oil Plc
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