Ghana Says Its Goal To Produce Oil By 4Q 2010 Is On Track
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago -(Dow Jones)- Ghana's deputy energy
minister confirmed Wednesday his country is set to start producing crude oil by
about this time next year, at a rate of about 120,000 barrels a day.
"We are right on course to start production at Jubilee by the end of next
year, the final quarter," Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said on the sidelines of a
Commonwealth Business Forum.
Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN), which operates the offshore Jubilee, said this month
that production would begin in the fourth quarter of 2010. The oil field is
estimated to have between 600 million to 1.8 billion barrel of reserves.
Other oil companies also have stakes in Jubilee, including Anadarko Petroleum
Corp. (APC) and Kosmos Energy. The Kosmos stake is up for sale, and potential
suitors are Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and China's state-run China National
Offshore Oil Corp., or Cnooc.
Buah said he could not comment on any developments in the sale of Kosmos's
stakes in Jubilee. Ghana has in the past indicated it has the right of first
refusal for any possible sales, and this appears to be delaying any deal being
made.
"I will say this," Buah said. "Ghana is very interested in making sure that
investors who invested in Ghana get what is rightly due to them, but we are also
not going to allow a country like Ghana, that is starting fresh in oil, to have
its rights violated by anybody."
The Commonwealth event that Buah was attending is a gathering of more than 50
countries that are mainly English-speaking, former British colonies.
In a speech Wednesday at the Commonwealth event, Buah said three other fields
being explored apart from Jubilee have found early traces of oil, but he did not
go into further detail.
Buah said his country intends to use revenue from its oil production wisely.
The Jubilee and other possible fields "have a huge potential to grow and
modernize our economy," he said. "We want our oil to be a blessing and not a
curse."
- By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 58-212-284-5651; dan.molinski@
dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
11-25-091205ET
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