Ghana's Oil Production Increases

Ghana�s oil production has increased from 66,000 barrels a day to 86,000 barrels a day, the Operations Manager of the Jubilee Partners, Mr Robert Gettka, has announced. The increase has partly been attributed to the successful oxidation exercise which was carried out to boost production. Oxidation in oil production is a process involving the injection of acid into wells to facilitate the oil flow to the surface or onto an oil platform. Mr Gettka told journalists in Takoradi last Saturday that by the middle of December, a total of 50 million barrels of oil would have been produced at the Jubilee Fields. He said since production started in December 2010, about 45 offloads had been made from the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah to standby oil tankers for export. At the beginning of commercial oil production in December 2010, the Jubilee Partners indicated that they could produce about 120,000 barrels of oil a day but that could not be achieved because of technical challenges. To meet the projected target, the Jubilee Partners carried out remedial works, including oxidation and drilling of additional wells, a measure which is yielding fruitful results. �Currently, we seem to have successfully gone past those problems and now we are at the rate much higher than we were in the middle of the year,� Mr Gettka said. �It is our intention to move to the potentially 100,000 barrels a day category based on additional three wells that we are currently trying to complete with two rigs currently working on them,� he said. Mr Gettka said if it was successful, as planned, then the production from the Jubilee Fields should inch towards the production target of 12,000 barrels. He said human capacity building of especially the local people, had been identified as one of the key necessities to enhance production towards that direction. Mr Gettka expressed the hope that the commitment of the Jubilee Partners to develop the local capacities and the inclusion of locals in their operations, would help to bring about development and transformation in the country.