TEN oil project to deliver first oil within six weeks

Oil giant, Kosmos Ghana, says work on the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) oil project  is almost complete and that the project is expected to deliver first oil within the next three to six weeks.

Hook-up of the FPSO connecting the pre-drilled wells to the vessel via the extensive subsea infrastructure was nearing completion, a statement issued by the company said.
It said this month, the integrated start-up sequence was expected to be initiated with water injection to the Enyenra reservoir, followed by oil production.
The sequence will then be repeated for the Ntomme reservoir.

TEN production estimates
The statement said the gradual ramp up in oil production towards the FPSO capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) was anticipated around the end of 2016 as the facilities completed performance testing and well production levels increased to optimal rates.
It, however, said per operator guidance, average annualised production from TEN in 2016 was expected to be approximately 23,000 bpd gross.
With the resolution of the Ghana-Côte d’Ivoire border dispute still pending at the International Tribunal for the Laws of the Sea (ITLOS), it said, additional drilling was not expected to occur at TEN until after the resolution of the dispute.
It said associated gas production at TEN was expected to be re-injected into the Ntomme reservoir gas cap until gas exports began.  
“Gas export was planned to commence 12 months after field start-up, with the Tweneboa gas reservoir coming on stream a further 12 months later. However, options to accelerate gas export are currently being evaluated, as the fabrication of the gas export facilities is ahead of schedule, with completion expected in late 2016, approximately six months early,” it said.

Broken FPSO
On the broken down turret bearing of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, it said it was now using a dynamically positioned (DP) shuttle tanker to deal with the anomaly that occurred in February this year.
Since then, 18 offtakes to the storage tanker had been successfully conducted using the DP shuttle tanker.
It said since the use of the DP, gross production had gradually increased, averaging around 90,000 bpd in June.
A shuttle tanker is a ship designed for oil transport from an offshore oil field as an alternative to constructing oil pipelines. It is equipped with offloading equipment compatible with the oil field in question.
Challenges with the turret bearing of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, identified in February 2016, resulted in the need to implement new operating and offtake procedures.
That necessitated the shutting down of the FPSO for an extended period in April, with production resuming in early May.
 “The operator expects the Jubilee field to continue operating under these new procedures for the remainder of 2016 and anticipates average gross annual production to be around 74,000 bpd for 2016, which equates to average gross production of approximately 85,000 bpd in the second half of 2016,” it said.
It said Kosmos and its partners had made excellent progress towards establishing the best long-term solution based on the work undertaken over the past four months.
It said the partners now saw converting the FPSO to a permanently spread moored facility with offtake through a new deepwater offloading buoy as the preferred long-term solution.
“The partners are now working with the government of Ghana to seek its approval for this option. The first phase of this work will involve the installation of a stern anchoring system to replace the three heading control tugs currently in the field, and this is expected to be completed by the end of 2016 and will require short periods of reduced production,” it said. 

FPSO shutdown in 2017
The statement said the partners planned a second phase of work to remove the load of the turret and risers from the bearing to allow the FPSO to be rotated to its optimal spread moor heading in the first half of 2017.
 Those phases of work, it said, were expected to cost approximately $100 to $150 million gross and it was estimated that the Jubilee FPSO would need to be shut down for eight to 12 weeks during the first half of 2017.