Tullow to shut down Jubilee for two weeks

Oil and gas company Tullow Oil is planning to temporarily shut down operations at its Jubilee field, offshore Ghana, starting February 1, 2017. 

A spokesperson for Tullow told Offshore Energy Today that the shutdown, which will last for fifteen days, is to allow for an interconnection between Jubilee and Tullow’s other Ghanaian field, the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN).

The TEN fields lie in the Deepwater Tano block, spread across an area of more than 500 square kilometers, around 20 kilometers to the west of the Jubilee field.

The interconnection will be done to enable gas export from the TEN field’s FPSO, the Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, through Ghana’s offshore gas pipeline to Ghana’s onshore gas processing plant Atuabo. The TEN field was fast-tracked to start first oil production in August 2016.

According to Ghana’s news website Graphic Online, which cited sources close to the TEN fields partners, the shutdown will enable the TEN FPSO to export a little more than 45 million standard cubic feet (mscf) of gas.

Jubile’s FPSO, Kwame Nkrumah, already has 12 weeks of planned shutdown for 2017 associated with the next phase of its damaged turret remediation works. The damage on the FPSO turret was found early last year prompting a change to operating procedures at FPSO.

According to Tullow’s update from last week, the FPSO is expected to be spread-moored on its current heading by the end of January 2017, which will allow the tugs currently required to hold the vessel on a fixed heading to be removed.

The next phase of the project will involve modifications to the turret systems for long-term spread-moored operations. In addition, the assessment of the optimum long-term heading continues, in order to determine if a rotation of the FPSO is required. The work is expected to be carried out in the second half of 2017.

Tullow also said last week that gas production from the TEN fields was being re-injected, with gas export expected to start later in 2017.

Offshore Energy Today Staff