Jubilee Field

=Background= Jubilee is an oil field in deep water (up to 1,400 meters) off the coast of Western Ghana, discovered in June 2007 by US oil concern Kosmos Energy as the largest oil find in the previous decade offshore West Africa. Tullow has estimated the size of Jubilee's reserves to be between 600 million and 1.8 billion barrels of oil. The field is also rich in gas, with reserve estimates between 800 billion and 1.2 trillion cubic feet. Crude oil from Jubilee is light and sweet, and the field has been called “a world-class sweet oil field” by operating company Tullow Oil.

=Contracts Negotiated= As of mid-2011, Tullow Oil was the field's operator with a 36.5% stake, in partnership with Kosmos (23.49%), the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) (13.75%) and Sabre Oil and Gas (2.81%).

The Jubilee field straddles two blocks, Deepwater Tano and West Cape Three Points (WCTP). Tullow is the operator of the Tano block with a 49.95% stake; Anadarko and Kosmos have 18% each; GNPC 10% and Sabre Oil and Gas 4.05%. Holdings in the WCTP block are Kosmos (Operator) and Anadarko (30.875% each); Tullow Oil (26.4%); GNPC (10%) and Sabre Oil and Gas (1.854%).

The GNPC in mid-2010 rejected a formal request by Kosmos to sell its stake in the Jubilee field for $4 billion to US firm ExxonMobil, which Kosmos had agreed to do in 2009. The GNPC declared the sale illegal and said at the time it was interested in acquiring the stakes itself.

Oil exploration company EO Group had held a 3.5% stake in the WCTP block until July 2011, when it sold its share to Tullow for a sum of $305 million. The sale followed charges by the Ghanaian attorney general's office that EO Group, among other damages, had caused the loss of several billions of dollars to the GNPC, laundered money, and engaged in a conspiracy to forge official documents.

=Production Activities= Jubilee began production on 15 December 2010, about 40 months after the field's discovery (normally, a field needs five years to begin production after discovery, according to Ghana Business News). Jubilee was producing 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) from five wells by May 2011, and as of December of that year was producing 80,000 bpd from eight wells, with a ninth well, J-07, offline as a secondary wellbore was being drilled, or sidetracked, to bypass a section of the original wellbore that had become unusuable.

In its first year of production (December 2010 to December 2011), Jubilee produced twenty two million barrels of oil and exported 21 oil cargoes. Ghana Business News reported in December 2011 that Tullow was planning to install a new floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit by late 2012, which would increase Jubilee's production capacity.

Ghana Oil Online reported in November 2011 that the Jubilee field was facing problems in production, and that Tullow and Kosmos would need to spend close to $1 billion to bring production on track to achieve the plateau limit of 120,000 bpd. The problems with oil output were due to technical issues with some of the wells, according to the companies, rather than early depletion of the reservoir. Increases in production have been delayed several times due to various technical issues, including problems with a blowout preventer and water-injection commissioning issues.

The World Bank has estimated that once plateau production of 120,000 bpd is reached, Ghana will enjoy the plateau for about five years, and decline thereafter with the field's life expected to last about 20 years.

=Geological and Geographical Features= The Jubilee field straddles the Deepwater Tano and West Cape Three Points blocks about 63 kilometers from the Ghanaian coast and 132 kilometers southwest of the city of Takoradi. Jubilee's geology has ideal hydrocarbon trap conditions, according to Tullow.

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