TEN FPSO lease extended till 2032

Tullow Ghana and partners have opted not to purchase the  FPSO Evans Atta Mills currently deployed at the offshore TEN  fields in Ghana.

Tullow in 2022 acquired the FPSO Kwame  Nkrumah previously operated and managed by MODEC Ghana at the Jubilee field, and the expectation was that perhaps the TEN FPSO could also be acquired when its lease with MODEC  expires in April 2024.

“During the year, the assumption was that the TEN FPSO lease term would end in April 2024,  when the purchase option was assumed to be exercised, was updated to reflect the best estimate view that the FPSO will continue to be leased until the cessation of production in 2032. It also assumes an exercise of the extension option,” the company clarified in its recently published annual report for 2023.

The $1.6 billion floating, production, storage, and offloading vessel, the Professor John Evans Atta Mills, was named after Ghana’s late president who died in 2012. The FPSO currently produces around 16,500 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, far below its nameplate capacity of 80,000 bpd.

However, the TEN fields have an estimated 2 trillion cubic feet of unassociated natural gas waiting to be developed.

Ghana’s energy ministry is reviewing the plan of development for the field submitted by operator Tullow Ghana.

Meanwhile, Tullow and partners have set up a decommissioning fund for the Jubilee field. The fund, aimed at facilitating the safe shutdown and restoration of the field at the end of production, will receive contributions from the partners in proportion to their stake in the project.

According to the  Petroleum Agreement signed with the Jubilee partners,  the decommissioning fund is expected to be set up when 50  percent of the field’s resources have been exploited.