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Two vessels have arrived in the country to carry out the final tie-in process for the commencement of shipping of gas from the jubilee fields to the gas processing plant at Atuabo. Upon completion of the process, shipping of an initial 30 million standard cubic feet (SCF) of gas from the floating, production, storage and offloading platform (FPSO Kwame Nkrumah) will start and ramp up to full capacity in the first quarter of 2015. The vessels arrived last Sunday soon after the successful completion of an independent audit of the onshore gas processing plant agreed on by the Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas) and the joint operating committee of the Jubilee Partners. The two vessels, ER Trondheim and Skandi Aker, have since moved offshore to commence the process to tie-in the onshore facility to the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah currently anchored on the Jubilee Field. Tasks They will carry out important tasks to make the offshore facilities mechanically complete, pre-commissioned and ready for commissioning. Their tasks include de-watering of the pipeline for installation of the onshore Mono-Ethylene Glycol (MEG) handling facilities. According to Ghana Gas, the plant was completed months after series of pretesting carried out in readiness for the gas flow. The Ghana Gas Company is the entity charged with the responsibility for the management of gas at Atuabo. After certifying its own facility, Ghana Gas and the Jubilee Partners agreed on appointing an independent audit firm to carry out auditing, which ended last Thursday. Officials say after the tie-in process, gas will be shipped in smaller volumes of 30 million SCF to the Atuabo plant for a start. Follow up When contacted, the Head of Corporate Affairs of Ghana Gas, Mr Alfred Ogbame, said the arrival of the vessels to complete the final lap of the process was a very important part of the project. The tie-in, which he said would take about five-days, would be followed by critical observation to ensure that the facility worked according to design. For its part the lead operator of the Jubilee Partners, Tullow Ghana, said it was pleased with the progress made so far at Atuabo and looked forward to working with Ghana Gas to tie in to its facilities for supply of gas from the Jubilee field to begin. It would be recalled that the inability to complete the plant on time led to the granting of a permit to the Jubilee Partners to flare a total of 500 million SCF with daily volume of about 15 million SCF until the end of October, 2014 after commencement of gas flow to the shore.