FPSO Mills begins Ghana voyage

Ghana’s second Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel, FPSO Prof John Evans Atta Mills, which will produce and store oil from Ghana’s Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) offshore oil fields, has set sail home.

It began its voyage to Ghana on Saturday 23 January, 2016. FPSO John Evans Atta Mills has been under construction in Singapore since October 2013.

Tullow Oil plc said the departure of the vessel on schedule is an important milestone for the TEN Project, which is now over 80% complete and remains on track to start producing oil in July or August 2016.

The vessel departed the Tuas shipyard in Singapore at 2.00pm and sailed into the Malacca Strait. Her voyage to Ghana will see her sail westward across the Indian Ocean before rounding the southern tip of Africa and sailing up the West African coast.

The FPSO is expected to arrive in Ghanaian waters in early March, where she will be stationed above the TEN fields, around 60 kilometres from the coast of Ghana’s Western Region. Upon her arrival, the FPSO will be attached to nine anchor piles, which will maintain her position above the oil fields, Tullow said.

These 21-metre high steel cylinders were built in Ghana by Group Five Construction Ghana Ltd. They were completed on time and are already installed in the seabed, awaiting the arrival of the FPSO. Other Ghanaian contributions to the FPSO include her module support stools, which sit on the deck and support heavy equipment.

These were fabricated by Ghanaian companies Seaweld Engineering Ltd and Orsam Ltd. The FPSO has a nominal production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil per day and a storage capacity of 1.7 million barrels.

She is 350 metres long and can accommodate 120 people. The FPSO was officially named by First Lady Lordina Mahama at a ceremony in Singapore in September 2015. The vessel is named in memory of the late President Atta Mills, who oversaw First Oil from Ghana’s Jubilee Field in 2010.

Managing Director of Tullow Ghana Ltd Charles Darku said: “We are delighted that the TEN FPSO has departed Singapore on schedule, keeping us on track to achieve our first oil target of July – August 2016.”

The development of the TEN fields is being led by Tullow Oil along with its partners the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Kosmos Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and Petro SA. The construction of the FPSO has been led by global supplier and operator of offshore floating platforms, MODEC Inc. The FPSO will be operated and maintained by MODEC Ghana Ltd.

Tullow estimates that average working interest production by TEN in 2016 will be around 23,000 bopd gross (net: 11,000 bopd).

Following the success of the Jubilee field discovery, the partners in Ghana embarked upon an exploration programme to find the next major deepwater field.

In March 2009, the Eirik Raude rig successfully drilled the Tweneboa-1 wildcat well in the Deepwater Tano licence, around 20 km west of Tullow’s Jubilee field and some 45 km offshore from the Ghana mainland. This initial discovery was followed up by a series of further successful appraisal and exploration wells which resulted in the discovery of the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) field.

In May 2013, Ghana’s Energy Minister at the time approved the Plan of Development for the field and Tullow commenced with its second major operated deep water development project in Ghana.

Similar to Jubilee, the development includes the use of an FPSO, which has a facility production capacity of 80,000 bopd, which will be tied in to subsea infrastructure across the field.

The TEN Project is Tullow’s second major operated deepwater development in Ghana, which will produce up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day.