Tullow Oil plc is going ahead with its production activities in Ghana despite the sharp decline in crude oil prices on the world market, the Tullow Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr Aidan Heavey, has said.
“Oil prices always move up and down but this time round, it has been a dramatic decline for the company but we are focused on key projects in Ghana.
Ghana is a key project,” Mr Heavey said to journalists at a media briefing in Accra.
Crude oil prices have seen a dramatic downturn in the past three years causing Tullow Oil plc’s shares to dip on the stock market. Despite these hiccups, Tullow Oil plc is bent on continuing with its production activities on the Jubilee and Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) oilfields in the Western Region.
Describing the TEN project as one of the biggest in the world, the CEO said “our focus is on time and budget for all our projects in Ghana.”
Thus the company, he noted, was committed to ensuring the TEN project was executed on time and on budget.
Mr Heavey, who was on a two-day working visit to Ghana, was optimistic the precarious situation on the oil market would improve in the short term.
Global Challenge
Highlighting the impact of the continuous decline in crude oil prices on the global market, Mr Heavey said the oil industry could not continue to operate successfully around $50 or less per barrel.
“Even Saudi Arabia is operating at a negative. There are $760 billion worth of projects on hold because it is uneconomic to function at $50 per barrel.”
He also touched on the trillion dollar plus loss in income in the past three years but nonetheless predicted a positive future outlook for the oil industry.
According to Mr Heavey, $4 billion has been expended on the TEN project, which is expected to start oil production in mid 2016.
A new Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel, named after President Prof. John Evans Atta Mills (late) was unveiled last month in Singapore by the First Lady, Mrs Lordina Mahama.
The FPSO, which is expected to produce 80,000 barrels of crude oil a day, will set sail from Singapore in December 2015, and arrive in Ghana in February 2016.
Local content
Answering questions on the participation of local companies in Ghana’s offshore sector, Mr Heavey said “TEN gave a better footing. There are more service companies on TEN
