ALL is set for the pouring of the country’s first oil in the last quarter of this year to enable Ghana to join oil producing nations across the globe.
The huge floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which will be positioned at the Jubilee Fields in the Western Region, is more than 96 per cent complete.
The FPSO is an eight-storey production platform used by the offshore oil industry in Ghana for the processing and storage of oil and gas, as well as offloading them to tankers for onward shipment to the international oil market.
This came to light when a group of media personnel from Ghana, led by the Deputy Minister of Information, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and some officials from the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), toured the construction site in a huge shipyard in Singapore, where the contractors, MODEC, are putting finishing touches to the facility.
Vessel name
MODEC announced in August 2008 that they had reached an agreement with the Jubilee Field partners and Tullow Ghana to provide and operate the first FPSO, which would be installed on the Jubilee Field offshore in the Western Region.
The agreement was entered into by Tullow Ghana, on behalf of the Jubilee Field partners: Tullow Ghana, Kosmos Energy Ghana, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, EO Group, Sabre Oil and Gas, and the GNPC.
FPSO’s part of the phase one development plan, would be installed in approximately 1,100 metres water depth on the Jubilee Field, which is one of the largest oil fields discovered offshore West Africa in the past 10 years.
The FPSO is capable of processing more than 120,000 barrels of oil per day and injecting more than 230,000 barrels of water per day, with 160 million standard cubic metres of gas.
The vessel, which is yet to be named and unveiled, was built in 19991 by Mitsui Engineering Shipbuilding in Chiba, and is 330 metres long, 59 metres wide, with a depth of 29.7 metres, and a draft design of 19.7 metres.
Indications are that the FPSO would be named after a prominent Ghanaian, town or symbol, which is yet to be decided on.
The owner at the moment is yet to be decided, but currently, the vessel would sail to Ghana on a leasehold agreement.
It is expected that the operations and maintenance of the FPSO would be contracted to MODEC, which is said to have more economic benefits to the partners operating at the Jubilee Fields.
GNPC has an agreement with the contractors, and some young Ghanaians have been attached to the contractors in a bid to ensure that local manpower is trained to manage the emerging oil and gas industry.
The chief engineer and the manager of the vessel on board are Ghanaians — one of them a former employee of the Black Star Line, who is currently working permanently for MODEC.
He is said to be one of the Ghanaian engineers who would be returning home to ensure that together, they trained other engineers to take over the operations at the appropriate time.
Offshore Jubilee Fields and FPSO capacity
In readiness for the FPSO, work is said to be far advanced as jumpers and some subsea structures have been laid.
The FPSO vessel is expected to be delivered within a world-record time of 18-months, setting sail to Ghana in May this year and arriving between June and July.
The vessel has a capacity to store more than 1.6 million barrels of crude at a time and has the ability to generate power to support its operations; it is also able to convert sea water for use by workers on the facility.
Facilities and units
The facility has gas turbine, chemical and water injection system which supports the country’s resort not to flare the huge deposit of gas.
There would be accommodation facilities for about 120 workers, with everything that would make them feel at home. It has deck cranes and crude separation system, water treatment plant with five cartridge filters, gas compressor and processing facility.
The FPSO also has inlet separation system, which consists of horizontal separator, electrostatic treater, low pressure degasser, crude transfer pump, among others, to enhance production and storage.
The turret system, which serves as one of the facilitators of the oil flow from the sub-sea, is in excellent shape and performs functions such as maintaining the vessel on station through single mooring.
The turret also allows weather vaning and fluid transfer from riser to the process plant to provide transfer of electrical, hydraulic and other control signals to the equipment on the seabed.
The FPSO and other facilities on the vessel were said to be manufactured to meet world standard and each unit on the vessel has a lifespan of more than 25 years.
Production deadline
Contrary to media reports that the oil might not come in the last quarter of this year as envisaged, the Jubilee partners said that could not be true.
The partners made it clear that all the anticipated difficulties that could hinder the delivery on the slated date had been taken care of. Therefore, they did not see any issue that could push them to go beyond 2010.
They explained that when the FPSO started, they might not produce up to the 120,000 barrels per day immediately as various processes had to be followed to ensure that from the sub-trees or structures through the jumpers to the FPSO, things were not forced to produce the 120,000 barrels immediately.
It said the country would be able to attain the 120,000 barrels per day after three months, when the facility and associated components were fully functional.
Mr Thomas Manu, the Operations Manager of GNPC, explained that the full time set for the facility to be completed was seven years.
But most of the things had been fast-tracked to enable the country to drill its first oil from the Jubilee fields in the last quarter of 2010.
The Deputy Minster of Information, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, commended the contracted company for completing the work on schedule.
He said the government was committed to the project and would ensure that the right things were done in a transparent manner.
The media
Members of the media team who were at the shipyard in Singapore, were amazed at the size of the vessel, whose full length most of them tried unsuccessfully to capture on lense. More so, were they with the amount of work that had been done on the vessel.
The press men were then taken through half-an-hour orientation, after which, in the company of the Deputy Minister for Information, they went on a tour of the facility and other units that would house offshore operations.
The visit to Singapore was an eye opener and without doubt, Ghana is surely set on a path to joining the prestigious club of oil producing countries in the last quarter of the year.
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